Afghans thwart two deadly plots

KABUL — Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, which has come under fire from Afghans for failing to detect multiple attacks last weekend, said Saturday that it had apprehended militants who were plotting to kill one of the country’s vice presidents and another group that was smuggling tons of explosives into the capital hidden in a truck of potatoes.

In both plots the evidence pointed toward planners in Pakistan, the agency said, and in the case of the plan to assassinate Karim Khalili, the country’s second vice president, the would-be attackers were linked to the Haqqani network, a Pakistan- based criminal network, according to their own confessions.

The announcement of the arrests appeared to be aimed in part at quelling criticism of the intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, and to remind the public how many attacks are prevented by intelligence agents. The announcement came just as the Taliban released video of last Sunday’s attackers taking their suicide pledges and the training camps where the Taliban claimed the attackers were prepared for the missions.

In the thwarted assassination plot, three Afghans, from Paktia, Ghazni and Wardak provinces, were detained last Sunday, the same day that other attackers took over buildings in Kabul, said Shafiqullah Tahiry, the intelligence spokesman who briefed reporters.

“All the detained individuals confessed their involvement during the preliminary investigations and admitted that they had been dispatched to military, terrorist and suicide training camps in Miran Shah, Pakistan,” he said. “They were trained in the use of light and heavy weapons by Arab and Pakistani trainers.”

The men who were caught with 11 tons of explosives, the Afghan intelligence service said, were three Pakistanis and two Afghans, who were apprehended with a large semiopen truck with a Pakistani license plate. “The truck was filled with 400 sacks of explosives,” Tahiry said. “They have hidden the explosive sacks beneath the potato sacks in a skillful way. ... ”

“Imagine for a moment in your mind what would have happened if the 10,000 kilograms of explosives had blown up in the city of Kabul with 7 million population,” he said.

Kabul’s population is not known because there has not been a census in several decades, but estimates put its population at between 5 million and 6 million.

The intelligence service showed photographs of the five men who had delivered the explosives and potatoes, the potatoes mostly in 100-pound brown sacks that covered white sacks of explosives.

The explosives mission, according to the intelligence service, was organized by several members of the Pakistani Taliban as well as the Qari Baryal group, which has been associated with attacks in Kapisa province, including the capture of two French journalists in 2010. Kapisa is the home province of the two Afghans in the group accused of smuggling the explosives. Information for this article was contributed by Sanger Rahimi of

The New York Times.