Carnage in Kabul
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Embassy resumes work The Indian embassy resumed functioning, and also began issuing visas, just two days after the horrendous attack. This is seen as a clear message that one suicide attack, however devastating, is not going to stop India from engaging with the Afghan people. India has committed $750 million to reconstruction projects in Afghanistan.
One of the important projects is the building of a road in the south-western part of the country, which will give Afghanistan access to ports in Iran. The road will be useful to India in its efforts to find a bigger market in Central Asian countries. Indians, working on the Zaranj-Delaram highway project in Nimroz province and security personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) stationed there, have been targeted by the Taliban. Landlocked Afghanistan is now dependent on Pakistan for most of its imports. Islamabad has so far refused New Delhi permission to export Indian goods to Afghanistan through Pakistani territory. The Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed told the AFP news agency that the Taliban would have been proud to claim responsibility for the attack but they were not involved in it. He said “he wished” the Taliban itself had carried out the attack since India was “the enemy of the Islamic emirate”. He accused the Indian government of sending “secret military experts to Afghanistan” to train the Afghan Army. Mujahed suggested that the attack could have been the result of regional rivalry. He said the United States, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and India “are rivals in Afghanistan”. Pakistan has been critical of India’s high diplomatic profile in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. The setting up of four Indian consulates on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has particularly irritated Islamabad. Pakistani officials have described these consulates as nothing but outposts for Indian intelligence agencies out to foment trouble in the restive tribal areas and to support Baluch and Pashtun separatist movements.
The Taliban, in recent years, has disavowed responsibility for bombings that have resulted in the deaths of innocent Afghan civilians. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his more vocal second-in-command Ayman al Zawahiri have singled out India as an enemy of Islam in many of their speeches in recent years. Their ire is directed mainly at the growing closeness between New Delhi, Tel Aviv and Washington and also at India’s Kashmir policy. The Taliban views all countries engaged in reconstruction work in Afghanistan as allies of the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) occupation forces in their country. New Delhi is also one of the strongest backers of the beleaguered Afghan President and there is no love lost between Karzai and the political and military establishment in Islamabad. The Indian embassy is situated on a main avenue near one of the busiest markets in Kabul. About 10 days before the attack, there was a security alert about a possible terrorist attack in the area. Adjacent to the Indian embassy is the Afghan Interior Ministry. The Air India office is also situated on the same street. Some Afghan reporters and officials suggested that the real target may have been the Afghan Interior Ministry, the target of a huge suicide bombing last year.
The number of suicide attacks in Afghanistan, which had reached alarming numbers, has escalated further in recent weeks. The killings of innocent Afghan civilians in aerial bombings by the U.S. and NATO forces have not helped matters. A few days before the attack

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