A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives near the German Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, at 8:22 local time this morning. The death toll has steadily risen in the hours since. The Afghan government says that at least 90 people were killed and 400 more wounded, according to the Associated Press. That makes the attack one of the deadliest in the history of the Afghan War–if not the deadliest. And it underscores the severity of the threat to the Afghan capital at a time when the Trump administration is debating what policy course to pursue next.
The Taliban was quick to deny any involvement. Afghan officials are blaming the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, which is part of the Taliban’s coalition, anyway. And the group is certainly capable of executing such an attack. However, even though the group has been responsible for many civilian casualties, it is sensitive to the charge that jihadists indiscriminately kill men, women, and children. Taliban leaders, like their comrades in al Qaeda, have concluded that such operations limit their ability to appeal to a broader swath of the population.
The Islamic State, on the other hand, doesn’t hesitate to kill anyone it deems to be an apostate or infidel. The difference is best illustrated in how the two rivals, who frequently fight one another, treat Shiites.
In years past, the Taliban committed war crimes against Afghanistan’s Hazaras, who are predominately Shiite. Two of the “Taliban Five” commanders held at Guantanamo until May 2014, when they were exchanged for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, were suspected of murdering “thousands of Shiites.” Yet, the Taliban has been more restrained when it comes to anti-Shiite violence in recent years.
This created a market opportunity within the jihadist community for the Islamic State, which has a fetish for Shiite blood. Since some Sunnis accuse Shiites of adhering to a deviant version of Islam, they see no need for restraint. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Sunni loyalists cater to this fetish in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. It is a blood sport for them. And this has helped drive up the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
In fact, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the “single deadliest conflict-related incident for civilians” in Afghanistan since 2001 came on July 23, 2016, when two ISIS suicide bombers struck a what the U.N. described as a peaceful demonstration in Kabul’s Deh Mazang Square. The terrorists in Deh Mazang deliberately targeted members of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority. The so-called caliphate claimed the massacre was retaliation for Afghan Shiites participating in the Syrian war on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Iran. UNAMA “documented 85 civilian deaths and the injury of 413 others” from the heinous assault. Incredibly, this is less than the casualty figures currently being reported out of Afghanistan after Wednesday’s’s bombing.
UNAMA has been recording civilian casualties, including both deaths and injuries, since 2009. According to its annual report, 2016 was worse than any of the preceding seven years, in no small part due to the surge of violence in Kabul. 11,418 people were killed or wounded in 2016 across Afghanistan. (By comparison, 5,969 civilian casualties were recorded in 2009.) Afghanistan’s south was still the most dangerous area, but the country’s “central region,” which includes Kabul, was not far behind. UNAMA found a 34 percent increase in civilian casualties in the central region in 2016, as compared to 2015, “due to suicide and complex attacks in Kabul city.”
ISIS’s Afghan arm, known as Wilayah Khorasan (or the Khorasan “province,” also known as ISIS-K), slaughtered Shiites in Kabul in the months after the assault on Deh Mazang Square. The group claimed responsibility for two additional suicide attacks at Shiite mosques in October and November 2016, killing at least 59 people and injuring 134 others. Wilayah Khorasan claimed that the victims deserved to die because they were “polytheists.”
ISIS continued to launch high-profile operations in Kabul during the first five months of 2017. And their operations haven’t solely targeted Shiites.
In February, the group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing outside of Afghanistan’s supreme court, killing at least 20 people. In March, a suicide assault team raided the Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan Hospital in Kabul. The hospital is Afghanistan’s largest for military personnel and their families. The jihadists dressed like medical staff in order to confuse their victims. Dozens more were killed or wounded.
Then, in May, another ISIS suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy near the U.S. Embassy, killing at least eight civilians in the process.
The U.S. has been leading a counterterrorism campaign against the Islamic State’s Wilayah Khorasan in eastern Afghanistan since early last year. The territory controlled by Baghdadi’s goons in Nangarhar province has dwindled. But the fighting has been intense; three American servicemembers were killed in April. And even as the U.S. and its Afghan allies have whittled away at the jihadists’ turf, they have retained the ability to launch mass casualty attacks in Kabul and elsewhere.
The suicide bomber responsible for this morning’s atrocity made it to the border of Kabul’s highly-secure “Green Zone,” which is supposed to be safe for foreign diplomats and media personnel. Afghan security forces prevented him from entering, but that provides little comfort to the victims and their families.
While Wilayah Khorasan remains a potent threat, we should not forget that the Taliban-al Qaeda axis is a far bigger danger to Afghanistan’s long-term security. The Taliban-led insurgency contests, controls or influences more than 160 of Afghanistan’s districts, according to data compiled by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR), which reports to Congress. Wilayah Khorasan currently controls only a handful of districts, at most. And a return to Taliban rule would surely usher in new barbarities, despite the organization’s current, tactical restraint in conducting operations.The Trump administration has yet to decide on a strategy for the Afghan war. Today’s bombing in Kabul is a reminder that one is sorely needed–quickly.
