Afghans’ ability to stop attacks in capital questioned in face of American withdrawal


KABUL (AP) ― The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan on Wednesday acknowledged the Taliban gained a propaganda victory in a 20-hour assault focused on the U.S. Embassy, which left 27 police, civilians and insurgents dead. But he insisted the attack was not a sign of vulnerability in the Afghan capital.

Still, the sophistication and vehemence of the attack, in which insurgents fired rockets into the U.S. Embassy compound from a nearby unfinished high-rise where they may have stored heavy weapons ahead of time, raised fresh doubts about the Afghans’ ability to secure their nation as U.S. and other foreign troops begin to withdraw. Afghan forces have nominally been in control of security in the capital since 2008 ― but it took heavy involvement by U.S. and NATO forces to route out the latest attackers.

And spectacular attacks in the well-protected capital have become more common. This week’s strike was the third deadly attack in Kabul since late June.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault. Kabul’s deputy police chief said it was likely the Pakistan-based Haqqani network carried it out on behalf of the extremist group. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker also blamed the Haqqanis, who have emerged as one of the biggest threats to Afghanistan’s stability, working from safe areas across the border in Pakistan’s tribal region.

It took 20 hours through the night for Afghan, U.S. and NATO troops to root out six insurgents holed up in the 12-story building on the Abdul Haq traffic circle, pounding them with barrages from attack helicopters as police and soldiers worked their way up floor by floor. From their roost, the insurgents had clear shots on the nearby U.S. Embassy and a nearby NATO compound, battling Afghan forces in a gunfight that lit up the night with tracer fire.

At 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Afghan Interior Ministry announced that the final holdouts had been killed. Police could be seen clapping their hands in celebration on the building’s roof, while others carried the mangled bodies of six insurgents down flights of rough concrete stairs and piled them into the back of a waiting ambulance.

Eleven Afghan civilians were killed in the battle, more than half of them children, along with five Afghan police officers, said U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Besides the insurgents in the building, four other attackers served as suicide bombers in coordinated attacks in several areas of Kabul ― three of them killed by police before they could detonate their explosives.

Allen said that the attack had no impact on operations and did not mean that Afghan security forces weren’t doing their job, arguing that many more potential attacks have been thwarted. However, he said it gave a propaganda victory to the Taliban.

“I’ll grant that they did get an IO (Information Operations) win,” Allen told reporters in the capital. NATO’s senior civilian representative, Simon Gass, called the attack “an extremely frightening even for the citizens of Kabul.”

Both these men and Crocker, the U.S. ambassador, argued that the insurgents are depending on headline-getting attacks because they can’t actually take and hold ground. But in Kabul, the fear expressed by some residents showed the effectiveness of the current campaign.

Thirty-six-year-old Ghulam Sadeq, who works in a government office, said he doesn’t trust the government or the security forces to keep him safe.

“It’s true that the security forces were able to defeat attackers and prevent more casualties, but why couldn’t they keep them from entering the city? Basically they are unable to stop them, or the insurgents have people helping them,” Sadeq said.

Key questions were how the attackers managed to get their heavy arsenal so close to the embassy ― into a building that Afghan and U.S. officials had long recognized was a potential platform for an attack. It appeared likely that either weaponry had been stored in the building ahead of time or that some insurgents had entered in advance with a supply of guns and ammunition.

A team of six police officers had been charged to guard the building ― a 12-story concrete structure that looks like it was destined to become office space or a shopping center but where building had been halted for some time. Wahidullah Ahmad, a policeman who was overseeing the scene after the attack, said he did not know if any of those guards were among those killed.

One witness said the attackers were equipped with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and possibly a mortar. They also boasted an 82 mm recoilless rifle, a powerful weapon that usually fires shells designed to destroy tanks and is very heavy to carry, much less rush up a building’s stairs in the heat of an assault.