Matrix Report
In what became the deadliest attack in Afghanistan this year, a suicide-bomb blast killed at least 63 and injured over 180 at a wedding party in Kabul on Saturday. The Taliban, however, were quick in denying responsibility for the attack and, ironically, condemned attack and the local affiliate of ISIS for the attack.
The attack comes at a difficult and complicated time for the country, especially when the US government is negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban. The US President Donald Trump hopes that a ‘quick deal’ will allow the coalition troops, at least a significant number, to withdraw from Afghanistan before the next US elections.
However, the US government hopes that the peace deal will only be signed if ‘certain security goals and conditions’ are met by the Taliban.
U.S. Special Representative on Afghan peace Zalmay Khalilzad also condemened the attack and hoped that the Afghan Peace Process will now be accelerated.
“We condemn ISIS and yesterday’s heinous attack on a Kabul wedding hall that killed scores of innocent Afghan families who had gathered to celebrate what was meant to be a joyous occasion. We must accelerate the #AfghanPeaceProcess including intra-Afghan negotiations. Success here will put Afghans in a much stronger position to defeat ISIS”, Khalilzad tweeted.
The recent ISIS attack doe not only highlight the US failures in Afghanistan, since 2001, in terms of failing to defeat the Taliban, but also in terms of allowing other terrorist and militant groups, such as the ISIS, to flourish in the country.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in its report, had also warned that the “Afghan government had weak oversight of security force units & their commanders in peripheral areas of Afghanistan”.
On the other hand, in his recent report to the UN Security Council, the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had said that “the lull in IS-directed international attacks “may be temporary” and that “Afghanistan remained the best-established conflict zone among those attracting foreign extremist fighters from within the region”.
The recent spate of terror attacks by the IS in Afghanistan has also raised concerns and fears over the future security landscape of the country.
