More than 50 killed in Afghan attack
Progress towards peace remains elusive, says acting Pentagon inspector general
KABUL: A suicide bomber blew himself up in a banqueting hall where Islamic religious scholars had gathered in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people, three government officials said.
Najib Danish, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said more than 80 other people had been injured.
“A suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a wedding hall where Islamic religious scholars had gathered to commemorate the anniversary of the Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) birth,” Danish said.
The attacker entered a banquet room in the Uranus wedding hall, a massive complex housing several large banqueting halls near Kabul airport, and detonated his explosives.
“Hundreds of Islamic scholars and their followers had gathered to recite verses from the Holy Quran to observe the Eid Milad-un-nabi festival at the private banquet hall,” said Basir Mujahid, a spokesman for Kabul police.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blast.
WASHINGTON: The US and Afghan governments have made “little clear progress” recently in compelling the Taliban to negotiate a peace deal, according to a new US assessment Monday that said military and political signs point toward continued stalemate.
“Progress toward peace remains elusive,” Glenn A. Fine, the acting Pentagon inspector general, wrote in an introduction to a comprehensive review of military, political and humanitarian conditions in Afghanistan during the July-september period.
These were the inal three months of the 17th year of a war that began in October 2001.
The report offered little support for the Trump administration’s assertions that its revised war strategy, announced in August 2017, is bringing the Afghan government and the Taliban insurgency closer to peace and reconciliation. When he visited Kabul in July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strategy “is indeed working.”
In the three months following Pompeo’s visit, the Taliban demonstrated their resilience even as the US military continued its focus on training and advising the Afghan army and police while helping develop an Afghan air force.
General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Saturday that efforts to draw the Taliban into peace talks are being made “below the surface.” But he indicated that progress is insuficient. “We’re a long way from where we could say that we’re on the right path,” Dunford said at the Halifax International Security Forum, referring to effectively combining military, political and social pressure on the Taliban.
Noting that US oficials as recently as a year ago called the war a stalemate, Dunford said, “it hasn’t changed much” since.
Pulling the Taliban into peace negotiations has been the central feature of the Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy, with little result so far. The effort has intensiied since Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador to Kabul, was appointed a special US envoy to Afghanistan in September. The Associated Press reported on Sunday that Khalilzad held three days of talks with the Taliban in Qatar.
Without referring explicitly to the talks in Qatar, Khalilzad told a news conference Sunday in Kabul, “I am talking to all interested parties, all Afghan groups... and I think there is an opportunity for reconciliation and peace.”
“The Afghan government wants peace,” he said.