Kabul: Suicide bombers attacked a compound housing Westerners in Kabul on Wednesday hours after US President Barack Obama signed a security pact during a short visit to a city that remains vulnerable to a resilient insurgency.
Afghan firefighters distinguish a burning vehicle in front of a guesthouse in Kabul on Wednesday, after a suicide bomb attack. Taliban insurgents claimed a suicide attack in the Afghan capital Kabul, shortly after US President Barack Obama left the city after an overnight visit. AFP
The Taliban said it was in response to Obama’s visit and to the strategic partnership deal he signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a pact that sets out a long-term US role after most foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.
The insurgency also claimed their spring offensive, which began two weeks ago with attacks in Kabul, would be renewed on Thursday, despite a security clamp-down in the capital.
Obama’s visit came a year after US special forces troops killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a raid in neighbouring Pakistan.
In a televized address to the American people from a base north of Kabul, he said the war in Afghanistan was winding down.
“As we emerge from a decade of conflict abroad and economic crisis at home, it’s time to renew America,” Obama said, speaking against a backdrop of armoured vehicles and a US flag.
“This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end.”
Nearly 3,000 US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban rulers were ousted in 2001.
The Taliban, overthrown by US-backed Afghan forces for harbouring Osama and other militants, were quick to take credit for Wednesday’s attack at Green Village, one of several compounds for Westerners on a main road out of the capital.
“This attack was to make clear our reaction to Obama’s trip to Afghanistan. The message was that instead of signing a strategic partnership deal with Afghanistan, he should think about taking his troops out from Afghanistan and leave it to Afghans to rebuild their country,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said over the telephone from an undisclosed location.
But the US’s Kabul ambassador Ryan Crocker said involvement of the Haqqani network, which Washington believes is based in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region and which it blames for high-profile attacks in Kabul in April, could not be ruled out.
On the anniversary of Osama’s killing, Crocker said he did not believe there would be a sole turning point in the war.
“Al Qaeda is still there. We do feel we are prevailing in this with our Afghan partners,” he said. “We cannot be in a position of taking on ourselves bringing perfection to Afghanistan. That has to be left to Afghans.”
But Crocker said there would be no repeat of the 1990s when a withdrawal of Western backers in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal unleashed a vicious civil war out of which the Taliban and Al Qaeda support bases arose.
Blood stains
Hundreds of police and intelligence agency troops surrounded the area around Green village after the attack. Ruined cars were seen in front of the compound gates but officials said no attackers made it inside the heavily-guarded complex.
“I was going to the office when the car in front of me blew up. I got on my bicycle and fled,” 40-year-old Farid Ahmad Mohammad said near the scene of the explosion.
A worker at the compound, Jamrod, said at a hospital where the wounded had been taken that he had been showing his identity card at the compound’s main gate when the vehicle exploded.
“I heard a bang and then I slammed into the wall,” Jamrod, still clad in blood stained jeans, said.
Wednesday’s attack was the latest in a recent surge of violence after the Taliban announced they had begun their usual “spring offensive”, and since they suspended tentative steps towards peace talks with the US.
Such incidents raise troubling questions about the readiness of Afghan forces to take over when militants remain able to stage high-profile attacks, even when already tight security had been beefed up even further for Obama’s visit.
Rob Taylor, Hamid Shalizi and Caren Bohan contributed to the story.
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