Afghanistan audacious attack: Karzai-Kabul weaknesses exposed

Posted on 08 July 2008. Tags: Afghanistan audacious attack, Kabul weaknesses exposed

Afghanistan weaknesses exposed in latest attack By Seattle Times news services

Defeat in Afghanistan: Remember Maiwand

KABUL, Afghanistan – The car bomb that ripped through the gates of the Indian Embassy on Monday, killing 41 people and scattering bodies across some of Kabul’s most protected streets, came as the latest sign of both the weakness of President Hamid Karzai’s government and the growing strength of Pakistani extremists in the tribal border areas.

Defeated & dejected in a Helmund dust storm

The strike, in what had been considered a well-secured area of the capital, was the deadliest suicide car bombing in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban in 2001. Nearly 150 other people were wounded.

Some ancient History:

Understanding the conflict:

Assault on Sovereignty. Pakistan says no to 11 new us demands. Pakistani Cheese for Western whine.

The last “Mayor of Kabul”. Mr. Karzai.“You can call me a US puppet ” controls only 10% of the Afghan territory. Exaggerated claim of US report.

Various warlord control ISAFistan just like before. This time its the European tribals.

ISAF is at wits end and in a quagmire.

ISAFistan is shrinking because the European fighters won’t venture outside their cantonments.

The new order without Karzai is emerging in Afghanistan! Wither NATO?

The bombing came amid surging violence in Afghanistan and as the authority of the Karzai government has been weakening.

Afghanistan quickly blamed Pakistan, India’s archrival.

Pakistan swiftly condemned the attack, but it was likely to generate more acrimony between the two neighbors, both considered key U.S. allies in the fight against Islamic extremists.

Afghan officials this spring accused Pakistan’s main intelligence service of having had a hand in an assassination attempt against Karzai in April. Last month, the Afghan leader threatened to send troops into Pakistan if authorities there could not stem the movement of insurgents across the border into his country.

Afghan and Western officials have said a recent spate of sophisticated, deadly attacks show the growing influence of al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists over Pakistani extremists in the tribal areas, and possibly alliances between them.

“These attacks seem designed to sabotage any improvement of relations between Pakistan and either of its two neighbors, India and Afghanistan, to assure that Pakistan has no alternative but to continue to support militant organizations as part of its foreign policy,” said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University.

The bombing drew condemnation from the NATO-led International Security Assistance force, which is battling Taliban fighters in the country’s long-restive south and increasingly violent east.

Afghanistan has seen a sharp rise in violence from Taliban militants in recent months. Insurgents are packing bombs with more explosives than ever, one reason why more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in June than in any month since the 2001 invasion.

Data released last month by the U.S. military showed attacks in the east up 40 percent. In the south, the military deployed 2,300 additional Marines in March to help allied forces in the Taliban’s traditional homeland.

Western troop fatalities are running at their highest levels since the beginning of the war, with 127 killed this year – according to the independent Web site icasualties.org – on a pace to surpass last year’s toll of 232.

But attacks such as Monday’s, even if aimed at official installations, tend to sweep away the most vulnerable.

The suicide car bomber followed a diplomat’s vehicle and detonated the explosives at the building’s main entrance, only 30 yards from where dozens of Afghans had lined up to apply for visas. Women and children browsing nearby shops were also among the victims.

The embassy is on a busy, tree-lined street near Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry that is protected on both ends by police, though the checkpoints are easily driven past.

The 8:30 a.m. explosion blew out the embassy’s front gates, knocked down its perimeter wall and damaged buildings inside the compound. The blast rattled much of Kabul and kicked up gray dust that shrouded the bodies of the dead and enveloped the survivors.

The force of the explosion blew clothing off many victims.

Six police officers and three embassy guards were among the dead.

In New Delhi, India’s foreign minister said four Indians, including the military attaché and a diplomat, were killed.

The blast also killed five Afghan security guards at the nearby Indonesian Embassy, where windows were shattered and doors and gates broken. Two diplomats were slightly wounded, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said.

Although suspicion fell on the Taliban, there was no immediate claim of responsibility, and a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied the militants were behind it.

The Taliban tend to claim responsibility for attacks against international or Afghan troops and deny responsibility for bombs that primarily kill civilians.

“Whenever we do a suicide attack, we confirm it,” Mujahid said. “The Taliban did not do this one.”

Compiled from Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and New York Times reports