Kabul on high alert after brazen Taliban attack
The Afghan capital was on high alert Tuesday a day after Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers struck the heart of Kabul, as U.S. said that top Taliban leaders may largely shun a new Afghan re-integration plan for now.
Taliban attackers launched a wave of attacks and triggered battles with security forces that left five people dead and sent terrified residents fleeing.
The authorities are likely to face questions about how the militants were able to penetrate the highly-fortified center of the city.
Heavily-armed militants targeted government buildings near the presidential palace, two shopping centers, a cinema and Kabul’s only five-star hotel in a coordinated blitz of attacks launched at rush-hour on Monday.
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Several suicide bombers blew themselves up at key sites, setting off blazing fires that sent plumes of black smoke into the sky, as Afghan security forces battled militants on the otherwise deserted streets. Several children were also briefly taken hostage, a security official said, in the most dramatic strike on Kabul since the Taliban laid siege to government buildings in February 2009, killing at least 26 people. The Taliban strike coincided with the swearing-in of a number of Karzai’s new cabinet ministers at the presidential palace, part of the painfully slow process of forming a government since the fraud-tainted election last year. The government had said on Monday that Karzai was to announce a new plan aimed at forging peace with the Taliban, although the militants have repeatedly rebuffed efforts at negotiation. The United States condemned the attacks as a "ruthless" act by the Taliban, whose rebellion to topple the government and oust foreign troops has been gaining strength in recent months. |
Re-integration plan
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday that senior Taliban leaders may largely shun a new Afghan re-integration plan for now but the program may be more successful at lower levels.
Afghanistan’s government is expected this month to announce details of the plan, which diplomats said would include job training and money to lure fighters from the hills.
"It’s our view that, until the Taliban leadership sees a change in the momentum and begins to see that they are not going to win, that the likelihood of significant reconciliation at senior levels is not terribly great," Gates said during a flight to India.
"I think on the other hand, we may see a real growth of re-integration at the local or district, provincial level."
Previous efforts to win over Taliban fighters failed because little attempt was made to offer protection or financial incentives.
The new program comes at a time when the insurgency is at its strongest since the Taliban were ousted from power in late 2001, and fighters who think victory is in sight may be less interested in any offer.
Gates, who is overseeing the deployment of 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, said the Taliban would feel more inclined to join reconciliation efforts once they felt "real pressure" and knew the Afghan government could protect them.
"Reconciliation, as they say, has to be part of the ultimate conclusion here, just as it was in Iraq. Whether that could include Mullah Omar, I frankly question whether that’s realistic," he said, referring to the Taliban leader in Afghanistan.