Taliban Misses Karzai in Assassination Attempt

The Taliban were supposed to have been wiped out in Afghanistan by now. The President of that country was supposed to be able to govern the whole nation. The people of Afghanistan were supposed to be at peace and enjoying increasing prosperity. Of course, things aren’t that way, and the Taliban proved it over the week-end by almost killing President Ahmed Karzai during a military parade.

Reports have it that 3 members of the Taliban hid in a cheap hotel, evading a wide cordon of security. The hotel overlooked the parade ground where the military was to hold ceremonies to celebrate the mujahideen victory over the Afghan communist government in 1992. At the end of the 21-gun salute, they opened fire.

They failed to kill President Karzai, but they did manage to kill a member of the parliament, a leader of a Shi’ite group, and a 10-year-old boy. The effect of the attack will be to further erode confidence in the Karzai government. Afghan parliamentarian Ramazan Bashardost told Reuters, “There is no security force in Afghanistan that people trust. If you pay attention to yesterday’s incident, the security forces fled the area before the ordinary people did.”

Meanwhile, it shows that the Taliban fighters can get just about anywhere in Afghanistan that they want to go. Joanna Nathan, an Afghanistan analyst for International Crisis Group, told Reuters, “It was clearly aimed at grabbing enormous amounts of attention; striking in the centre of the capital. It was flashed around the world, but further than that, it shows them penetrating what was obviously a high security event."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, “The terrorist threat is real. It is deadly, and defeating this enemy has to be a top priority of the United States, of the Afghan government, of the Iraqi government, and the NATO alliance who is there working with the Afghan government.” Perhaps if there weren’t 160,000 US troops misdeployed in Iraq-Nam, things might be different.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Kensington Review Home