Radical forces want to destabilise Afghanistan

The country’s security forces must redouble their efforts to maintain security and vigilance at all times

With parliamentary elections due in October, the events of Monday in Afghanistan serve as a sad and timely reminder that there are powerful forces within the country that are determined to roll back the freedoms and liberties hard won over these 15 years. Twin suicide attacks in Kabul killed at least 25 and injured scores more, while a separate bombing on a Nato convoy in Kandahar province killed 16 — 11 of which were schoolchildren.

The twin bombings in Kabul took place inside the city’s socalled Green Zone, an area that contains government offices and embassies and is supposed to be highly secure. One bomber set off his device, and ten minutes later, as aid workers and journalists responded to the scene, a second bomber posing as a journalist set off his bomb — a deliberate strike at media workers who are tasked with covering events in Afghanistan. It was also a deliberate strike against those freedoms that are now enjoyed by many who live in the troubled nation.

The bombings in Kabul were claimed by a group affiliated with Daesh. It, along with the Taliban, is intent on returning Afghanistan to a strict and perverted model where individual freedoms are subverted. While the Afghan government has expressed a willingness to sit and talk to the Taliban, Monday’s events show that even then, the violence, bombings and killings that have strained Afghanistan would continue.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from these events, it is that Afghanistan’s security forces must redouble their efforts to maintain high security and vigilance at all times, and that the international stabilisation forces there are still needed.