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Afghans Investigate Pakistan Link To Kabul Raids
Afghan intelligence agents have said they are investigating links between Pakistan and Taliban militants who killed 26 people in three simultaneous suicide bomb and gun raids on state offices in the capital, Kabul.The three coordinated raids on two ministries and a prisons department office on February 11 show a new tactic by the Taliban, who have previously only attacked one target at a time. The raids may have been inspired by last year's attacks in Mumbai, India, and were designed to cause maximum panic and publicity, but analysts said Afghan forces blunted the effect by acting quickly to kill the militants. "As they were entering the Ministry of Justice before starting their indiscriminate killing of the civilians in there, they sent three messages to Pakistan calling for the blessing of their mastermind," Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh said. The National Directorate of Security is investigating the possible link to Pakistan, a spokesman for the state intelligence agency said on February 12. Since the beginning of last year, the Taliban and their allies have launched fewer attacks inside the heavily guarded capital, but those they have carried out have tended to be against high-profile targets designed to grab media attention. The February 11 attacks also came on the eve of the first official visit to Afghanistan by President Barack Obama's new regional special representative, Richard Holbrooke. "These suicide bombers were not the ordinary Taliban type of suicide bombers who come and blow themselves up somewhere. They had rifles as well and their aim was not to immediately explode themselves," said Haroun Mir, political analyst and co-founder of the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies. "It was in my opinion to take hostages and continue the way they did in Mumbai, to paralyze Kabul and hopefully inflict a big blow to Mr. Holbrooke's trip to Afghanistan. This trip is a very important trip to Afghanistan." Posted by: Fred 2009-02-14 |
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