For us city dwellers witnessing a Mazda van stop on a main road to shower the city with rockets launched from an automatic mortar clumsily installed on the back of a Mazda van would be a rare, unexpected and somewhat unbelievable experience. Today, Kabul faced one of its most horrific days of autumn of 2020. Shaqayeq and Mashaal were having breakfast with their mother when a rocket ruptured the wall of their house and covered the dead bodies of both young girls with blood and dust.
The rocket launcher that was to aim a citadel instead threw its missiles at the city at random because its unstable and shaky platform was installed on a moving Mazda van. Twenty three out of the twenty four rockets carried by the launcher were fired at various areas in Kabul resulting in at least 8 deaths and the injury of tens of civilians.
The lives of Afghans and in particular those who live in the capital Kabul pass in daily fear of suicide bombers, stray rockets and magnetic mines. In a country where a single military vehicle can threaten a city and its inhabitants in broad daylight, on what basis and with what logical argument can people hope for meaningful negotiations with the Taliban, let alone striking peace with them?
The Taliban will soon declare that the attack was not carried out by them. It may be difficult for western analysts to differentiate between active terrorist groups in Afghanistan as they believe that the ISIS and the Taliban are two separate groups. The people of Afghanistan, however, know better. The root of all terrorist groups in Afghanistan is the Taliban. The ISIS is the same as the Taliban in a different guise when the situation requires it.
The Qatar peace talks between the Taliban and the United States in which Afghan officials took part recently, was another show of failure in negotiations with criminal terrorists.
On the one side of these negotiations are those - who with the financial assistance and support of foreign governments - see themselves as power-sharing partners in war against their defenseless and helpless people, and on the other side are negotiators who manipulate these talks in order to gain credibility for themselves. Qatar, the host of the negotiations, hide its regional isolation behind a false success, and Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, US top negotiator thinks of reaching the pinnacle of fame where he would be called the champion of peace.
Today, Mr. Khalilzad should be asked about the whereabouts of some 5,000 dangerous prisoners whose freedom he brokered, and that why in return of their freedom no guarantees for the cessation of violence and terrorist attacks were obtained? The United Nations says most of the freed Talibans went back to war zones.
It is the ever-suffering people of Afghanistan who pay the price for Taliban crimes and the incompetence of those who are involved in fake peace negotiations with the missionary infidel Taliban sect, but the responsibility for the current short-comings should not all be put on their supportive foreign powers or the naive belief that negotiations would bring about peace.
The government of Ashraf Qhani’s weak hand in intelligence and security is another reason for the continued absence of security in Afghanistan in general and Kabul in particular.
Officials in charge of the county’s intelligence and security lack knowledge and field experience to ward off such threats. While experts such as Rahmatollah Nabil (former head of National Directorate of Security), or Bismillah mohamadi (former Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army and former Interior Minister) and tens of others with excellent record with the National Directorate of Security are removed from office, the appointment of young inexperienced individuals to sensitive intelligence and security posts have resulted the current situation.
The import of explosives into the country of such volume and the installation of a rocket launcher in a workshop with the full knowledge of the people is more a sign of an intelligence and security lapse and the weakness of responsible government departments rather than the boldness and self- confidence of terrorists.
Pentagon has announced that by mid-January, it will reduce the number of US soldiers in Afghanistan to 2500. And according to the agreement between the Taliban and the US government, all American soldiers will evacuate Afghanistan by the first half of 2021.
With a look at today’s situation in the country – from security threats to poverty, unemployment, disease and the disaster the coronavirus has inflicted on Afghans - if the international community turns its back to Afghanistan like it did after the Soviet withdrawal in 1990s, the prospect for this country is nothing but civil wars and destruction.
