Suicide bombers attacked a compound housing Westerners in Kabul today hours after US President Barack Obama signed a security pact during a short visit to a city that remains vulnerable to a resilient insurgency.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack which involved a car bomb and insurgents disguised as women on the eastern outskirts of the capital, killing seven people, a Gurkha guard and six passers-by, and wounding 17.
The Taliban said it was in response to Obama’s visit and to the strategic partnership deal he signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a pact that sets out a long-term US role after most foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.
The insurgency also claimed their spring offensive, which began two weeks ago with attacks in Kabul, would be renewed on Thursday, despite a security clamp-down in the capital.
Obama’s visit came a year after U.S. special forces troops killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in a raid in neighbouring Pakistan.
In a televised address to the American people from a base north of Kabul, he said the war in Afghanistan was winding down.
“As we emerge from a decade of conflict abroad and economic crisis at home, it’s time to renew America,” Obama said, speaking against a backdrop of armoured vehicles and a US flag.
“This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end.”
Nearly 3,000 US and NATO soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban rulers were ousted in 2001.
The Taliban, overthrown by US-backed Afghan forces for harbouring bin Laden and other militants, were quick to take credit for Wednesday’s attack at Green Village, one of several compounds for Westerners on a main road out of the capital.
“This attack was to make clear our reaction to Obama’s trip to Afghanistan. The message was that instead of signing a strategic partnership deal with Afghanistan, he should think about taking his troops out from Afghanistan and leave it to Afghans to rebuild their country,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
But America’s Kabul ambassador, Ryan Crocker, said involvement of the Haqqani network – which Washington believes is based in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region and which it blames for high-profile attacks in Kabul in April – could not be ruled out.
On the anniversary of bin Laden’s killing, Crocker said he did not believe there would be a sole turning point in the war.
“Al Qaeda is still there. We do feel we are prevailing in this with our Afghan partners,” he said. “We cannot be in a position of taking on ourselves bringing perfection to Afghanistan. That has to be left to Afghans.”
But Crocker said there would be no repeat of the 1990s when a withdrawal of Western backers in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal unleashed a vicious civil war out of which the Taliban and al Qaeda support bases arose.
