The attack at the entrance of an American base where Vice President Dick Cheney stayed Tuesday demonstrated how quickly a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan can deploy a suicide bomber.
The Taliban, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups activate suicide bombers like precision guided weapons. The enemy is able, on short notice, to place them at a particular spot at a precise time and to wait until the optimum moment to detonate high explosives, military analysts say. In this case, the explosion outside the U.S. air base in Bagram killed more than 20 people.
The lone suicide bomber’s ability to position himself near military personnel underscores the Taliban’s comeback after a U.S. invasion ousted its leaders in December 2001 and cleaned out al-Qaida training camps.
“The insurgency has strengthened its military capabilities and influence,” Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday.
Cheney flew into Bagram on Monday and had planned to leave later in the day for Kabul, but he was forced by inclement weather to remain overnight. He thus became the highest-ranking member of the Bush administration to spend the night in a war zone.
Cheney was still in his room on the base when the terrorist attacked.
“I heard a loud boom,” he told reporters. “The Secret Service came in and told me there had been an attack on the main gate.
“As the situation settled down and they had a better sense of what was going on, I went back to my room,” he said.
Told by a reporter that the Taliban had claimed responsibility, Cheney suggested the group was trying “to find ways to question the authority of the central government” in Afghanistan.
“Striking at Bagram with a suicide bomber, I suppose, is one way to do that,” he said.
Bobby Charles, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement in the first Bush term, said much of the enemy’s comeback can be traced to Afghanistan’s huge drug trade.
He said the Taliban and other insurgent groups siphon off proceeds when Afghanistan’s poppy crop is converted to opium and heroin and smuggled out of the country.
“We are in a blizzard,” Charles said. “The reason the terrorists continue to survive is the drug money. They have bought off so many public officials in Afghanistan because we have allowed it to happen.”
Afghanistan’s poppy crop reached a record 500,000 acres in 2004. “That is the largest amount of any drug ever grown in any country in a year,” Charles said.
During centuries of warfare in Afghanistan, various factions typically retreat each winter to mountain hideouts — and in this war to Pakistan — to rest and replenish supplies before launching a spring offensive,as is expected this year.
Bill Sammon contributed to this story.
