The streets are clogged with yellow taxis again. Peddlers are back pushing carts of shampoo and socks, sidewalk juice sellers are crushing pomegranates, and pigeons are pecking at corn outside a riverside shrine. The evidence of the Afghan capital’s bloodiest week in eight months has been scrubbed away.
But the city still has not fully recovered.
It is not only the shock of triple terrorist attacks that took 150 lives within 10 days last month — an ambulance-borne suicide bomb, a hilltop raid on a luxury hotel and a commando attack on a military academy. It is not only the visible heightening of security that followed — armed men on corners, roads blocked for official convoys and turreted military vehicles parked outside foreign and government compounds.
It is something else in the frigid winter air — a deeper sense of anxiety that things are out of control, that the government is failing to serve the public and consumed by political power struggles. People fear the destructive menace of the Taliban and ISIS, but their anger is directed at their own leaders, especially President Ashraf Ghani, who many feel have abandoned them.
“People did not suddenly become afraid, but this time the violence has added to their frustrations with the government. It showed a total failure of institutions and leadership,” said Haroun Mir, an independent analyst and former government security adviser.
Like several observers, Mir said Afghans feel increasingly frustrated with the National Unity Government, which they see as preoccupied with combating domestic political opponents and courting international favor, while many ordinary citizens can’t find jobs or feel safe walking the streets.
“Security has become the privilege of the elite,” he said. “The rest of us are in the hands of God.”
The insurgents have continued to gain far-flung territory and launch devastating urban attacks, even as the US government embarks on a new initiative to strengthen and expand the Afghan defense forces, bringing in thousands of new US military trainers in close cooperation with Ghani and his security advisers.
In west Kabul, where so many mosques have been attacked in the past year that some are now guarded by local militiamen and others have closed, people are especially nervous and disillusioned.
“This government is destroying itself and the country,” said Khudadad Allahyar, 65, a resident of Dasht-e-Barchi, a district of west Kabul dominated by Shiite ethnic Hazaras. “When we leave home to go and pray, we are not sure we will come back safely.”
Ghani has responded swiftly to the recent spate of terrorist attacks, although with mixed results. He visited survivors in hospital wards and announced the removal of numerous police and military officials. But he also offered contradictory remarks — first giving an emotional speech at a mosque about “avenging” the violence, then a televised lecture about the urgency of seeking reconciliation with the Taliban.
Several of Ghani’s aides said he remains focused on his other top priorities as well as the insurgent threat. One priority is reforming a public sector known for bloat and corruption; another is preparing for local, parliamentary and then presidential elections in the coming months. But that process has been marred by technical and political problems, and last week officials announced that the first polls slated for July probably will be delayed until October.
“The brutality and lives lost in the Kabul attacks created a psychosis of fear, and people are full of anxiety, but this has not distracted the president and his team from the broader agenda,” said a senior aide to Ghani, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“If we can pass through this crisis, the government will be back on track, and the electoral season will be healthier.”
The Washington Post
