For those keeping score, Islamic extremists knocked off nearly five dozen less extreme Muslims in attacks in Afghanistan over the weekend. Better there than here! Now the details.Item 1: A co-ordinated double suicide bombing hit beautiful downtown Kabul this morning (local time), killing 25 people and wounding 45. Among the deceased were an AFP photographer and a cameraman for a local TV station, as well as four cops. The attack was the latest in a string of deadly large-scale bombings and assaults that have struck the capital and other cities in the shithole country this year.
The blasts took place in the central Shash Darak area, the site of NATO headquarters and a number of embassies. The American embassy condemned the "savage bombings" and pledged continuing support for the Afghan "government" and people in their fight against terrorism. "Let us know if there's anything we can do to help," it said, "short of sending more than a few thousand troops back into the quagmire. One Vietnam in a century is enough."
Inspector Hassan bin-Sober of the Afghan police said the first suicide bomber was on a motor bike. The second attacker was on foot, pretending to be a journalist and mingling with the crowd of reporters that had rushed to the scene of the first attack. He then detonated his explosives, sending the journos and himself to the Muslim Paradise. "I saw journalists covered with blood, this time they targeted the media," a taxi driver named Mohammed told surviving meeja types. "When the explosion happened, everywhere was covered with dust and fire, it was so horrific scene" with bodies and body parts "thrown about on the street and the pavement."
Item 2: A couple of hours later, a suicide car bombing in the southern province of Kandahar killed 11 children. An Afghan official who gave his name as Mohammed said a suicide bomber targeted a NATO convoy in the district of Daman, but succeeded only in killing children from a religious school located by the roadside from where the explosion occurred. 16 people, including 5 NATO soldiers [Any Americans? Ed.] and 2 cops, were wounded.
The US embassy and NATO refrained from pledging further support or from making any comment at all. Which group of jihadis was responsible for the dastardly attack remains unclear, as no-one has stepped forward to say "We did it! We killed a bunch of kids!" However, the local ISIS affiliate and the more firmly established Taliban carry out regular attacks around the country, with the Taliban usually targeting the government and security forces and ISIS targeting members of the country's the Shia minority, whom the affiliate perceives as apostates.
Walt says (for the second time in one post), better there than here. Rather than wasting billions of dollars and the lives of NATO troops trying to referee the Muslim civil war, let `em duke it out, as long as they do it in their own arena!
FURTHER READING (added 1/5/18 - MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY!) - "'Failure strategy': How NATO won the Afghan war - and then lost Afghanistan", CBC commentator Murray Brewster's review of Operation Medusa: The Furious Battle That Saved Afghanistan from the Taliban, by Maj-Gen. (Ret'd) Dave Fraser, Royal Canadian Army. Excerpt: "There is, however, a larger cautionary tale being told in this book about political hubris — one the Trudeau government should heed as it prepares to plunge the country into a new peacekeeping mission in Mali...."
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