KABUL, 9 June 2003 — A suicide bomb attack on peacekeepers which killed four German troops in Kabul comes as a stark reminder that security remains the No. 1 concern for ordinary Afghans. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last month declared Afghanistan was no longer a major combat zone and had entered a period of stability and reconstruction, but analysts say security remains the main concern as the country slowly emerges from decades of war.
The suicide car bomb attack Saturday came a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai declared during a visit to Britain that extremist groups no longer had the ability to organize large scale operations.
Karzai on his return here described the attack on a bus carrying German peacekeepers as “the work of terrorists, enemies of Afghans and humanity.”
The bombing, the first deadly assault on International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) peacekeeping troops, was a rare attack in Kabul, which is an oasis of relative security compared with the southeast of the country where Taleban and Al-Qaeda remnants continue to launch regular attacks.
“Attacks like this are designed to torpedo the peace process in a country that has been ravaged by over 20 years of war and plunge it back into anarchy,” German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder warned.
While ISAF provides security in Kabul and was generally welcomed by the majority of the population, the Afghan government has been rebuffed in its repeated calls for the peacekeepers to be extended to the provinces where Taleban holdouts and their Al-Qaeda allies launch regular attacks on government and foreign targets.
Forty Taleban were killed Wednesday in a battle with Afghan pro-government troops in southeast Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan.
And over the past week hundreds of US-led coalition troops have launched two operations in the mountains of southeast Paktia province to hunt down suspected Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters.
A recent series of attacks on deminers has also forced mine clearance organizations to suspend work across southern Afghanistan, hampering reconstruction efforts such as road building which can only take place after the clearing of the millions of mines which litter the country and continue to maim and kill.
The US military has acknowledged that while the days of major operations may be over, “Afghanistan remains a combat zone.”
And analysts say people in the provinces named security as their chief concern.
“As has been universally acknowledged, security is the most important issue for Afghanistan’s reconstruction in the immediate future,” World Bank country manager William Byrd said in a recent report.
“It does not make sense for the international community to take chances or to try to move forward with half-measures in this critical area.” Karzai’s government is attempting to disarm some 100,000 militiamen and reintegrate them into the nascent national army but warlords and local militias retain control of much of the country and efforts to rebuild the national army are proceeding slowly.
Rumsfeld said a controversial civil-military rebuilding project, known as provisional reconstruction teams, would “play a constructive and useful role” in rebuilding Afghanistan and increasing security, but analysts were skeptical.
“International military forces are best placed to focus on maintaining and improving security rather than getting directly involved in humanitarian or reconstruction activities,” the World Bank’s Byrd said in his report. The project has also drawn flak from international relief organizations who charge that it blurs the line between military action and non-military intervention and puts aid workers at risk of attack by extremists. Since deposing the harsh Taleban regime in November 2001, a US-dominated military coalition of some 11,500 troops is still in Afghanistan hunting top Taleban leaders and Al-Qaeda fighters who remain on the run.
