Afghans in despair after attack by Taliban

FEARS FOR FUTURE

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN • The news footage from a remote northern city Monday showed only the rubble that remained, hours after a Taliban car bomb and gun attack left 11 Afghan intelligence workers dead and at least 60 civilians wounded. But although most Afghans never heard the explosions, gunfire and screams ring out, the incident reverberated across the demoralized country.

Following weeks of relentless insurgent ground assaults and bombings — some in areas that had long enjoyed relative calm — the brazen attack in Aybak, capital of Samangan province, seemed to many Afghans like one more nail in the coffin of long-stymied talks between Taliban and Afghan delegates.

Insurgent spokesmen said the blast targeted an intelligence agency compound and all the dead were agency employees, but Afghan officials said that gunmen then attacked the next-door city hall building, busy with public visitors. Scores of civilians were injured including children, hospital officials said.

“This is what the Taliban have to offer the Afghan people. Destruction, destruction and more destruction,” Javed Faisal, a spokesman for the government of President Ashraf Ghani, tweeted Tuesday.

One council member in Samangan, a fertile northern region that was an ancient centre of Buddhism, said the Taliban presence there is “stronger than any time in the past 20 years.” In Kabul, Shah Hussain Murtazawi, a senior aide to Ghani, tweeted that the attack had “closed the doors of peace.”

Across Afghan society, the attack seemed to deepen growing feelings of disillusionment with the peace process and fears for the future. Over the past week, a variety of observers said they now believe that the Taliban will eventually return to power through a combination of force and political manoeuvring, and that the 19-year civil conflict may continue indefinitely.

In Washington, meanwhile, concerns about the faltering peace process and mounting violence, following reports of Russian bounty payments to the Taliban to kill American troops, led to calls to rethink U.S. strategy, including a slowdown of planned troop reductions.

The top civilian official for NATO in Afghanistan, Stefano Pontecorvo, said Tuesday that the Taliban’s “insistence on continuous violence is jeopardizing the unique opportunity for peace.” The insurgents, he said, must “cease bloodshed and engage constructively” in negotiations.”

But the Taliban seems to remain undeterred. On Monday, insurgents carried out 30 ground assaults and remote bombings in 17 provinces, killing 19 people in addition to the toll in Aybak, according to the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs. The incidents included assaults on a prayer ceremony in western Faryab province and a district headquarters in northern Balkh province, once a showcase of stability.

AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Afghan security personnel inspect the site of a car bomb blast at Afghanistan’s intelligence agency in the northern city of Aybak on Monday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which also injured scores of civilians, crushing citizens’ hopes for the peace process.