Unremitting violence in Afghanistan

Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city, became a war zone when a bomb blast occurred outside a mosque during Friday prayers last week, killing the leading pro-Taliban cleric Mujib Rahman Ansari among others. Hameedullah Motawakel, the spokesman for the governor of Herat province, shed some light on the incident stating that at least eighteen have died and twenty-three others were wounded. The casualty figures are expected to rise.

The attack is reported to have been a suicide attack. The police report states that the suicide bomber kissed the cleric’s hand as he was arriving at Gazargah mosque to lead the Friday prayers before detonating the bomb. Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said, “The country’s courageous and influential scholar was martyred in a brutal cowardly attack.”

Suspicion for the attack has fallen on the involvement of the Islamic State (IS) group. IS has previously admitted to having assassinated Rahimullah Haqqani in a blast on August 11, 2022. The bomber detonated explosives that were concealed in an artificial limb. The cleric who was killed was in favour of the Taliban and supported female education.

Mujib Rahman Ansari had openly criticized the US-backed governments that permitted the deployment of Western militaries in Afghanistan. The US-led government left Afghanistan in August 2021 and it was expected that a new wave of terrorism will envelop the already war-torn country once the foreign troops leave. According to the Taliban, Afghanistan’s security has improved since taking control of the country, but that does not take into account several blasts that have targeted mosques during prayers.

Lutfullah Lutf, an Afghan journalist and political analyst, said, “In the last few years, any religious scholar who has enjoyed support across Afghanistan … or supported the government … [is] the potential target of such attacks”. Egypt has condemned the recent attack and expressed solidarity with the victims’ families.

Afghanistan has been under the vice of such bombings from 2022. Earlier, on January 22, 2022, a blast destroyed a minivan killing six people in Herat. Islamic State claimed the responsibility of the attack. On April 19, 2022, at least six were killed and nearly eleven were injured including children when several blasts echoed across the Hazara Shiite communities in Kabul. These blasts occurred at the Abdul Rahim Shaheed High School and in close vicinity to the Mumtaz Education Centre. On August 5, 2022, a bomb exploded in a Shiite Muslim religious gathering killing eight and wounding eighteen. It was revealed that the Islamic State terrorist group was behind the incident. On April 22, 2022, a Sufi mosque in northern Afghanistan was destroyed when a blast at Khanaqa-e-Malawi Sikandar mosque in Kunduz Province killed thirty people and wounded over a dozen. On August 17, 2022, another bomb ripped through the Abu Bakr Siddique mosque in northern Kabul during evening prayers. Mullah Amir Mohammad Kabuli, the Imam of the mosque, was among the dead.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan commented, “We deplore yesterday’s attack in a Kabul mosque, the latest in a disturbing series of bombings which have killed and injured more than 250 people in recent weeks, the highest monthly number of civilian casualties over the last year.”

A few months before the US-led troop’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the western Herat province was previously rocked by a blast on March 12, 2021. A van that was filled with explosives detonated in a crowded area wounding over fifty people and killing seven. The then President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, blamed the Taliban for the attack.

The government of Afghanistan will need to re-strategize its security apparatus in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks. The country has already faced an immense loss of lives and property and is decades behind regional countries and the world at large.

According to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Taliban returned to power in 2021 following a 20-year insurgency. In the report, Lindsay Maizland, Editor for CFR, says, “The Taliban threaten Afghans’ civil and political rights enshrined in the constitution created by the U.S.-backed government. Since regaining control, the Taliban have taken actions reminiscent of their brutal rule in the late 1990s.”

Talking about the status quo of women in the country, she further added, “The UN mission in Afghanistan has documented numerous human rights violations. Women have seen their rights obliterated. The Taliban have prohibited most girls from attending secondary school and prevented women across the country from working”.

The Afghan government along with the Taliban needs to neutralize the IS threat before it’s too late. The world is yet to recognize the Taliban rule that has faded because of their lack of development in the human rights domain. Regional countries in South Asia need to work out a strategy in collaboration with Afghanistan to minimize the footprint IS can have and to limit its threat.

The current government of Afghanistan should lead the strategy work that will put them a step ahead of the IS. This will allow the Afghan government to create a tactical plan to subdue IS’s plans in the future. If the IS threat is not reduced and the faction not disbanded, then the future of Afghanistan will continue to remain bleak and may jeopardize the very existence of the state.

The writer is a columnist and an author