Deadliest attack in three years raises fears of sectarian strife in Afghanistan

By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Published on Wednesday 7 December 2011 01:05

THE bodies lay mangled in a circle; twisted and torn, caked in blood and dust, or clean and intact.

A few lay heaped together and hard to tell apart, others lay alone.

All around was the debris of violent death: shards of life; sandals, hats, and a yellow plastic bag spilling powdered milk towards a lifeless hand.

At least 55 people were killed in Kabul yesterday and more than 130 wounded. It was the deadliest single attack since 2008, and the first since the fall of the Taleban ten years ago to specifically target Afghanistan’s Shia minority.

The wounded staggered dazed, sometimes tripping through the carnage. Others could not move: A middle-aged woman lay trapped on her back where the blast had broken her legs. She reached up, without words, beseeching help.

In the centre of the circle there was a darkness on the road, a starburst of charred ground, which marked the exact spot where the suicide bomber unleashed hell.

A simultaneous attack in the north of the country also targeted Afghanistan’s Shias. Officials said four people were killed by a bicycle bomb, close to the Blue Mosque in Mazar-e Sharif, which wounded 21 others. Police said the victims were part of a convoy chanting slogans to mark the religious festival of Ashura.

Afghan officials blamed the Taleban, but the insurgents denied responsibility. In a statement, the Taleban said the attacks were “inhumane” and blamed them on “foreign invaders”.

Shia leaders urged calm last night, but the attacks have already raised fears of a sectarian backlash and further inflamed the ethnic fractures which fuelled a civil war in the 1990s. Mohammad Mohaqiq, a member of parliament and an influential Shia leader, said whoever perpetrated the attack was trying to ignite a civil war, and he urged his supporters to maintain “civil order”.

Although sectarian attacks are unusual in Afghanistan, similar attacks have ravaged neighbouring Pakistan.

The Kabul bomber exploded the device in a tightly packed crowd outside the Abul Fazl shrine, on the banks of the city’s river, where hundreds of people – including women and children – had gathered to mark the holy festival of Ashura, which commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson.

Eyewitnesses said the explosives were hidden in a backpack and that the bomber was posing as a mourner among Shia devotees who were clamouring at the entrance to the shrine, to pay their respects inside.

As shock turned to rage in the moments after the blast, survivors began chanting anti-Pakistani and anti-American slogans. Pakistan is widely blamed for harbouring and helping the Taleban-led insurgency inside Afghanistan. There is also a growing frustration at the ongoing levels of violence, which many blame on America’s military intervention.

President Hamid Karzai, who was speaking at a news conference after meeting Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, said it was “the first time that on such an important religious day in Afghanistan terrorism of that horrible nature is taking place”.

The attacks came less than 24 hours after a major international conference on the future of Afghanistan in Bonn. Nato troops are planning to stop fighting by 2014 and hope to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces. Moments after the blast, hundreds of spectators fled screaming, while ambulances raced to the scene from civilian hospitals and a nearby military base.

General John Allen, the commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, said the bombs were “an attack against Islam itself”.

“We denounce and condemn these atrocities in the strongest of terms,” he said. “Our prayers and deepest sympathies are with the families and loved ones of those innocent civilians killed or injured in today’s horrific attacks.”

Although Afghanistan has never had a census, the Shia are thought to make up about 20 per cent of the country’s 30 million people. Most of Afghanistan’s Shias are ethnic Hazaras, and thousands of them were massacred by the Taleban when they ruled Afghanistan. The Taleban are mainly Sunni and ethnically Pashtun, but they have generally avoided sectarian violence.

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