Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Public Reaction to the Deadly Attacks on Kabul City

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Public Reaction to the Deadly Attacks  on Kabul City

Last Monday, at 9am, a group of Taliban militants launched a complex attack by detonating a frightful bomb close to Gulbahar Township in 16th district of Kabul city. The attack involved a vehicle bombing and gun assault on an Afghan defense facility, also damaging nearby civic and cultural centers and a primary school, with reportedly killed about 40 people and injured at least 100 people while dozens of young school children and civilians were also included. As reports quoted, the Ministry of Interior said the Taliban militants took position inside one of the buildings in Gulbahar Township following the explosion. The militants started opening fire on people and the defense ministry installations.
Given the ongoing peace talks in Qatar, this attack was fully unexpected to most people, and so severely condemned the event. While according to other group of people, especially Afghan experts, it links to the improvement of the Qatar peace process.  As Khalilzad kicked of his seventh round of talks with the Taliban official on Saturday this week hoped to produce significant result, but lasted for four days without any clear result. However, according to some sources both sides have likely agreed about holding intra-Afghan talks on July 7-8 in Qatar. Therefore, both government and Taliban militant group are trying to have upper hand in the ongoing peace talks and war has been extremely intensified with improvement of peace talks.
According to the Defense Ministry statement, at least 151 Taliban militants were killed in counter-terrorism operations during the past 24 hours across Afghanistan as said an on Tuesday. Other official reports inform of a vast series of operations comprising Faryab, Badghis, Paktiya, Maidan Wardak, Ghazni, Takhar, Helmand, Kapisa, Khost, Logar, Nimroz, Herat, Balkh and Sar-e-Pul provinces. However, when comparing the two war completions between government and Taliban, Taliban have showed more atrocity against civilians. According previous reports, they were responsible for absolute majority of civilian causalities as repeatedly blamed for war crime. No reason or no religious teachings permit the killing of small school children and other civilian. Though Taliban claimed attacking on the Ministry of Defense Logistics Center, the vicinity of the target area there is just a residential area.
Overall, the latest attack on Kabul city has severely exasperated people led to harsh criticism against security forces. In fact, one of the main roots of public discontent from government is too much tolerance against Taliban. Unfortunately, the foundation of this tolerance was laid down by the previous government when the members of the group were called dissatisfied brothers. The term “dissatisfied brothers” were not just a word added into the political terminology of Afghanistan, but a wrong foundation laid down in dealing with the murderers of the Afghan people and bloodthirsty creatures who did not think of anything other than murder and an unblemished desire for bloodshed and destruction. Undeniably, it should be acknowledged that the current government has changed its policies against government but still there is appeasing policy in some parts of the state.
Moreover, the Afghan public opinion also dissatisfied from the tolerant policy of United States against Taliban. In the first decade of US-Taliban war in Afghanistan, when the president of United States issued order of attacks against Taliban and All-Qaeda, Taliban was quickly removed and Afghans enjoyed a few years of tranquility. This had created much hope and optimism among Afghan people but now with increasing growth of Taliban people have completely disappointed. Many people believe that this failure is not due to the weakness but due to the soft policy adapted against Taliban.  Therefore, we must give people the right to hate this situation with expressing their feeling through criticism against the dreadful situation.
The other parts of people’s concerns relate to the untimely withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan. In this situation, if they leave Afghanistan a lone, it will really change the country to Harvard of Terrorism. The Monday attack on Kabul not only dissatisfied everyone, but also disappointed people expressing that peace is not possible with this group. With posting death bodies and causalities pictures in social media networks everybody considered the actrocity as war crime. If one fairly judge about the latest event in Kabul and massacre of innocent civilians and injuring 50 children, no one should be optimism against this group.
In public opinion, Taliban did not leave any place at the heart of people; many Afghan people say that they can accept any systems other than Taliban because showed a very unforgettable brutality in Afghanistan. These shows that the Taliban have become more hated than ever and even those who, somehow, have sympathy with this group have been shocked by the waves of public hatred. What is to be learned from all this hatred is that peace with such creatures is impossible. If we impartially and fairly judge about the depth of this issue, then the Taliban’s attack on the innocent children and civilian of Kabul and shedding blood of 50 school students are not acceptable.
Given the bilateral and multilateral agreements with international community, especially United States, Afghan people have more expectation in regard to the essential issues of Afghanistan.  Handing over the country to the hand of these creatures that is not committed in any rule and regulations might be a great mistake. While according to some analysts peace talks with Taliban are essentially useless and we need to talk to the real Taliban.

Mohammad Zahir Akbari is the permanent writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at mohammadzahirakbari@gmail.com

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