EDITORIAL: Female university students have been staging protests in several Afghan cities since a suicide bombing in Dasht-i-Barchi, a Shia Hazara neighbourhood of Kabul, attacked an education centre where hundreds of students preparing for a university entrance test were taking a mock examination, killing at least 53 people and wounding more than 110 others.
As many as 46 of those killed were young women as they sat in the front rows of the examination hall in compliance with the Taliban insistence on gender segregation.
Last year before the Taliban returned to power, three bombs exploded near a girls’ school in the same area that left at least 85 people, mostly girl students, dead and about 300 others wounded. IS-K has since stepped up acts of violence against religious minorities, including Sikhs, as well as Taliban killing several of their prominent clerics.
While condemning the latest terror attack and other such incidents in a statement, the Kabul government termed it the work of “malicious networks” and a “conspiracy by enemies of Afghanistan” to create divisions among the Afghan people. These ‘enemies of Afghanistan’, though, happen to be local terrorists: recruits from Afghan Taliban ranks as well as defectors from the so-called Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan it hosts, which launches cross-border attacks into this country.
Yet instead of addressing Pakistan’s security concerns the other day Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Abbas Stanikzai took exception to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s address last month to the UN General Assembly in which he shared the international community’s disquiet regarding the threat terrorist groups operating from Afghan soil pose to other countries. “How long can we tolerate this?”, he asked a gathering in Kabul, going on to imply that the PM Sharif’s statement amounted to intervention in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, as he added, “if we rise against this, no one will be able to stop us.”
He and others in the Islamic Emirate would be well-advised to ask themselves the question, how long members of the international community are going to countenance the threat extremist elements based in Afghanistan pose to them? Even its well-wishers, including China, Russia, and Pakistan are worried about the Kabul government’s failure to stamp out violent extremist groups.
In a restrained but necessary riposte to the Stanikzai’s highly provocative remarks Foreign Office (FO) spokesman in Islamabad said “this is very unfortunate and unacceptable ... we consider such statements as against the spirit of friendly relations between our two brotherly countries”.
Reminding that country’s new rulers of the role Pakistan has been playing in facilitating peace in Afghanistan, the FO spokesman emphasised the need for the “interim Afghan authorities to address international expectations and concerns.” Also, it is their basic responsibility to provide physical and economic security to all Afghans. Positive engagement with friendly nations can help usher in peace and progress the people of that war-devastated country need so badly.
Given the clear patterns of violence against the Hazara community in Afghanistan, the attack on Kaaj Educational Centre was predictable; it was preventable as well. However, the rulers of Afghanistan did not introduce any special security measures for this persecuted community despite the increase in attacks against its members as seen in April and May 2022.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022