Indian nationals were specifically targeted in three separate suicide bomb attacks in Kabul on Friday. The death toll came to 18 with 32 seriously wounded. Two of the buildings were guesthouses for Indians who worked in NGOs. The third blast was huge and most of the victims were Indians.
Juan Cole notes:
India is also a significant provider to Afghanistan of development aid and investment, and so is helping build up the government of Hamid Karzai. Having offered $1.2 billion in reconstruction aid, India is the largest regional donor. There are some 4,000 Indian workers in the country, some of them “security personnel,” according to the US Council on Foreign Relations.
Several prominent Tajik (Persian-speaking Sunni) politicians have long-standing ties to New Delhi because India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW, the equivalent of the CIA) provided aid to the old Northern Alliance at a time when it was under siege in the late 1990s by the Taliban. These Tajiks are die-hard enemies of the Taliban, who had committed massacres against them. The Taliban animus against India thus is multifaceted.
The attack lasted about 4 hours, according to Radio Azadi, with some of the attackers using small arms fire. All five were ultimately killed.
Some observers were surprised that the attack was launched on the commemoration of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. But many hard line Salafi revivalists, who say they want to go back to the practice of Islam that prevailed among the first generation of the companions of the Prophet, oppose celebration of birthdays in general and of that of the Prophet in particular.
Cole also mentions that this attack happened in the wake of two defeats suffered by the Taliban:
- The capture of 7 of the 15 members of the Quetta Shura. This was the Command Council of the old Taliban of Mullah Omar. Reported by the CSM.
- American drones killed Muhammed Qari Zafar, a major Taliban leader in North Waziristan on Thursday.