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Afghan men bury victims of a bomb attack against Shiite Muslims outside the Karti Sakhi Shrine in Kabul
It was a country poised to celebrate the recent strides it had made, yet on Tuesday Afghanistan’s citizens stood weeping outside a Kabul hospital near a pile of blood stained clothes and shoes, just hours after the single worst sectarian attack seen in the country’s capital since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. Today hundreds of Shi’ite Muslims in Kabul attended the funeral procession for the victims, carrying the coffins and posters of children killed in the blast. With no verified claim of responsibility for the attack, Kabul residents cast their narrowed glares in the direction of Pakistan.
“We all know Pakistan was behind yesterday’s incident because Pakistan never wants Afghans to live in peace and stability,” said Kabul resident Wali Rahman.
Now President Hamid Karzai has today declared that he believes a Pakistan-based group are responsible for the bomb attacks and vows to confront the Pakistani government over the issue, potentially adding further strain to the countries’ increasingly fraught relations.
The devastating incident sparking widespread condemnation, prompted Karzai to cut short a European trip that was designed to promote his country’s recent advancements. Leaving at least 59 dead and 160 injured, the blast in Kabul occurred after a man detonated a suicide vest as he approached the gates of the shrine of Hazrat Abul Fazal Al-Abas. The target was hundreds of Shi’ite Muslims who gathered to mark the Shi’ite festival of Ashura – a festival commemorating the seventh-century killing of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, during Islam’s split into Sunni and Shiite sects. On the same day another blast from a bicycle bomb targeted an Ashura procession in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif killing four and injuring 17 others.
Although Afghans have long identified themselves more by ethnic group than by religion, Afghanistan has a history of tension between Sunnis and the Shi’ite minority, who make up around 20 percent of the population. Previously persecuted by the Taliban regime, the minority Hazara Shi’ites have often sided with the Kabul government and its foreign allies and have recently become increasingly emphatic in displaying their religious beliefs, which has vexed some of the Sunni majority. The attack, the first ever on an Ashura ceremony and indeed a religious ceremony of this scale in Afghanistan, now causes fears of sectarian turbulence in a country that is already racked with violence aimed largely at the government and foreign forces. Previously Afghanistan had been spared the sectarian aggression that regularly rattles Iraq by al Qaeda and Pakistan by the Pakistani Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
The incident came just a day after Afghanistan’s Western allies gathered at an international conference to pledge long-term support for the country following their combat troops’ withdrawal at the end of 2014. Analysts say that the attack may have been aimed at stirring up ethnic tensions and stalling efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict – an attempt to reignite the ethnic and sectarian violence that devastated Afghanistan during the 1990s civil war.
“The followers of all religions in Afghanistan have been living in brotherhood and unity throughout history and the terrorist attacks on Ashura day is a conspiracy to undermine the unity of Afghans.” Said President Karzai
Although the Afghan interior ministry had earlier pointed blame at the Taliban for the organization of the attacks, in a statement posted on their website the Afghan insurgent group strongly condemned the bombings, saying that targeting civilians was “against the code of conduct of the Taliban fighters” and blamed “invader enemies” for the deadly blast.
According to a report by a local Afghan TV channel on Wednesday, a Pakistani-based militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al Almi has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, though the spokesman of the group could not be reached nor his claim verified.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami is a radical offshoot of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group established in Pakistan’s populous province of Punjab in the 1990s and has previously assassinated Shiites and attacked Ashura processions, though this would be their first assault in Afghanistan.
Labelled a terrorist organisation by the US in 2003 Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was banned a decade ago by Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf though critics say there has been a failure to crack down on the organization. Afghan political analyst and member of parliament Shukria Barikzai has slammed the Pakistani government for its failure to prevent the attack: “I’m really sad because how is it possible that one of our neighbour countries will allow themselves and give themselves the right to come and do such an inhuman and un-Islamic action on another soil in another country for another nation.”
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has been linked to al-Qaeda as well as the Pakistani government’s intelligence agency, the ISI. There are therefore mounting suspicions that these groups may have teamed up to demonstrate Afghanistan’s precarious future stability. Pakistani military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas has dismissed the suggestion, adding that the government was doing everything it could to quash the group. “They are being hunted down” He emphasised.