[Dawn] Afghans were Wednesday burying 59 people killed in unprecedented bombings against Shia Moslems as officials blamed Pak turbans, accusing them of trying to whip up Iraq-style sectarian violence.Investigators are poring over who was behind the coordinated attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul and northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif that the Taliban, the main faction leading a 10-year insurgency, have denied carrying out.
| An Afghan official claimed Wednesday that the bomber who attacked a shrine in Kabul was a Pak, affiliated to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group, which has been blamed for killing thousands of Pak Shias. |
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
group, which has been blamed for killing thousands of Pak Shias.
The faction, which is alleged to have links with Al-Qaeda, -- the terror group blamed for igniting sectarian war in Iraq -- has not previously grabbed credit for any attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Experts suggest that if Lashkar-i-Jhangvi or indeed any other Pak faceless myrmidons orchestrated the attacks, then elements in the Afghan Taliban may have played some part, possibly in facilitating the strikes.
Haqqani pops to mind first, followed by Hekmatyar...
Tuesday's blast on the holiest day in the Shia calendar marked the first major attack on a key religious day in Afghanistan.
The twin blasts have prompted fears of a slide into sectarian violence in Afghanistan, which until now has avoided the kind of attacks that have pitched Shia against Sunni Moslems in Iraq and Pakistain.
The victims were buried Wednesday in emotional scenes. Several hundred people marched through west Kabul with two of the bodies on the way to a burial ground, an AFP photographer said.
The US embassy confirmed that an American citizen was among the 55 people killed in the Kabul attack but gave no further details.
President Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
scrapped a planned trip to Britannia, flying back to Afghanistan for an emergency meeting with security chiefs after attending Monday's Bonn conference on his country's future.
He was later due to meet survivors of the attack in hospital.
Lutfullah Mashal, a front man for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security intelligence agency, confirmed that an investigation into the tragedy was now under way.
Sediq Sediqqi, a front man for the Afghan interior ministry, said the attack was the work of "the Taliban and their associates", adding no-one else carried out such suicide kabooms in Afghanistan.
An Afghan security official speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
said the bomber was from the
Kurram Agency...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora...
in Pakistain's border region and was connected to Sipah-i-Sahaba, a Lashkar-i-Jhangvi offshoot.
The two are essentially the same outfit. Either that or they're one outfit with interchangeable memberships.
Many Afghans traditionally blame Paks for fuelling much of the violence in their country.
... because without Pakistain Afghanistan would be an entirely different place.
Lashkar-i-Jhangvi was one of the groups involved in the kidnap and beheading of Wall Street Journal news hound Daniel Pearl in Pakistain in 2002.
It is notorious for suicide kabooms and attacks on Pak Shias.
The Afghan source added the attack aimed to "inflame sectarian violence in Afghanistan" but did not provide any evidence to back up his claims.
The official added: "This is not the work of the Taliban or if there is any Taliban involvement, it is very minimal."
A Western security official speaking anonymously also suggested Pak involvement though stressed it was not clear whether this was "institutional".
There are reported links between Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Pak intelligence.
"We're particularly looking at TTP (Tehreek-i-Taliban, the Pak Taliban) although at the moment we don't have any proof," he said. The source added he believed the attack "aimed to weaken Afghan society".
A Pak security official speaking anonymously said Lashkar-i-Jhangvi was closely associated with the Pak Taliban.
But he added: "This group is on the run and doesn't have the capacity to carry out attacks inside Afghanistan, particularly in Kabul."Pak security analyst Hasan Askari emphasised that there was no clear evidence at this stage of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi's involvement.
"Lashkar people have ideological affinity with other turban groups operating in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, and they support each other but they (Lashkar) have to establish that their strength is increasing," he said.
Some analysts have raised fears of more sectarian violence in Afghanistan following the attacks but Shia leaders have urged calm in the aftermath.