Taleban targets whom it wants, when it wants

The brazen suicide attack on a top intelligence official in Kabul on Dec 6 has again fuelled fears that forces against peace in Afghanistan would go to any extent to stoke insecurity and the government is unable to stop them.

The brazen suicide attack on a top intelligence official in Kabul on Dec 6 has again fuelled fears that forces against peace in Afghanistan would go to any extent to stoke insecurity and the government is unable to stop them.
Asadullah Khalid, head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), was severely injured by a man posing to be a Taleban emissary in Kabul to take the stalled peace process forward. When Khalid embraced him, the attacker set off a concealed bomb.
President Hamid Karzai who held a press conference after visiting his intelligence chief in hospital said the attack was planned in Pakistan. “Skill and complexity were involved in planting the bomb. … This was not the work of the Taleban,” he said. “We want clarification from the Pakistani government…. We know that this individual travelled from Pakistan.”
It is not the first time that an attacker has pretended to be an Afghan peace emissary. In September 2011, Karzai’s chief peace negotiator, ex-president Burhanuddin Rabbani who was head of the High Peace Council was killed in his home. The assassin had claimed he was a high-ranking Taleban contact who wanted to reconcile with the government.
Member of Parliament (MP) Sharif Balkhabi from Sar-e-Pul said last week’s attack has “taken place in response to the recent trip of Afghanistan minister of foreign affairs to Pakistan; to sabotage the peace process and trust in the peace process.”
Balkhabi observed the High Peace Council should not attempt to resolve the conflict.
However, other MPs have strongly urged the government not to lose heart and continue to search for a peaceful solution to the war in Afghanistan.
Ustad Mohammad Akbari, MP and member of the High Peace Council, said: “We have made so many sacrifices to find a way of peace. Nothing can prevent the peace process.”
He urged security agencies to plug the gaps in security and diligently track down those behind the assassinations and killings intended to wreck the peace process.
Nazeefa Zaki, MP from the central province of Kabul, dismissed the peace process as a way of “deceiving the people “They (the armed opponents) are not the people to accept the peace in Afghanistan; their goal is crime and destruction of Afghanistan.” In her opinion the “inflexibility of these people is a problem for the Afghan people.” She does not believe in negotiating with the Taleban. “There is success only in countering the armed opponents of the government,” she told Killid.
The attack on the government’s chief spy in what should have been an impenetrable fortress – the National Directorate of Security guesthouse – has sent ripples of dismay among ordinary people. “I was trembling when I heard the news; it was unique, I had never heard such a thing,” said Rabeya Muradi, a teacher in a private school. Is there any place that is safe in the country, she wondered anxiously.
There are still no answers to how explosives were carried past the rings of security around the NDS chief.
Political analysts are worried it could be evidence of the Taleban having penetrated the government security. The implications are “destructive and risky,” they have warned.
MP Balkhabi said: “This shows that Taleban are in our security system. (Otherwise) they could not have entered the NDS guest house.”
NDS officials said the assassin who hoped to kill Khalid had claimed he was the messenger of peace from Taleban side to the government.
Shafiqullah Tahiri, NDS spokesman, said the attacker only managed to injure his chief.
Why was Khalid the target?
Nazar Pariani, the chief editor of Mandgar newspaper, wondered why Khalid was the target.
“The attack occurred despite Khalid being frequently on the move and not living more than two nights in one place because of fear of assassination,” he said. “This means that the NDS was aware of the threats and had started efforts to counter it. However, the efforts were not good enough because the suicide assassin was able to reach Khalid.”
The government has condemned Pakistan and ordered an inquiry into the breach in security. President Karzai is scheduled to meet his Pakistani counterpart at a meeting in Ankara, the Turkish capital. Political watchers say the president should use the opportunity to push diplomatic efforts to isolate the backers of violence in Afghanistan.
Political expert Wahid Muzhda was of the opinion the NDS chief may have been emerging as an important player in the peace talks. “He may have got orders from probably the president to get into negotiations with suicide attackers,” he said. 
Muzhda said Khalid in his last speech in Parliament had promised to neutralise the plans of the government’s opponents.
Noorul Haq Ulumi, military expert and MP, echoed the same view, and said the NDS chief had threatened to “dry the nests of terrorists in the border”.