TIME: No Shortage of
Suspects in Kabul Bombing
Monday, September 30, 2002
By MICHAEL WARE / KABUL
The stomach-clutching thud of an explosion rolled
across Kabul at around 9pm last Saturday. It began
with a flash in a small garbage pile on a grassy
common outside a sprawling Soviet-era tenement. The
building is home to several hundred families in the
suburb of Microyan, and the detonation, only thirty
yards from the ground floor apartments, shattered
every window facing the park in the crumbling
five-story block. Sleeping children woke terrified,
coated in shards of glass. A three-year-old stood by
her mother, her face laced with tiny cuts. Two or
three people were reported injured, none seriously.
For hours the tinkling of sweeping glass could heard
up and down the corridors.
A government spokesman, on the scene within the hour,
neatly coiffured and wearing a suit, blamed
terrorists for placing the device "in an open field"
behind "a defense ministry building." Media reports
described it as a bomb in a residential area not far
from the U.S. embassy. "We know who these people are
who are against peace and stability," the spokesman,
Omar Samad, said of the bombers.
But nothing is ever quite as it seems in Kabul. The
defense ministry building against whose wall the bomb
had been left was not an empty set of offices; it's
the headquarters of Afghan military intelligence. At
the time of the explosion General Zahir Akbar, the
country's military intelligence chief, was at his
large varnished desk scribbling orders on scraps of
paper. Though the building was all but empty, it
seems as if someone knew he would be there. "He was
the target," one of his aides told TIME amid the
debris of the general's office minutes after the
bombing. "We had been expecting this explosion."
Gen Akbar is an urbane, educated and thoughtful
military man who is currently teaching himself
English. A Soviet-educated professional soldier, he
had been one of many who left the communist regime
during the Soviet occupation to join the resistance
in the Panjshir Valley led by the charismatic Ahmad
Shah Massoud. He fought in the Northern Alliance
against the Taliban and was on the frontlines during
last year's U.S.-led bombing campaign. In the new
order of president Hamid Karzai, Akbar is a man on
the rise. Though he owes his position to the powerful
defense minister, Mohammed Qasim Fahim, it's possible
others in the defense minister's circle perceive
Akbar as a political rival. As the general's staff
pointed out, U.S. officers and senior brass from the
International Security Assistance Force that protects
Kabul are frequent visitors to his busy headquarters.
It suggests a level influence likely to cause
jealousy in the internecine world of Afghan military
affairs. "It was someone out to get the general," an
aide said, dismissing the notion of terrorist
involvement.
The possibility that the bombing may have been a play
in a violent internal power game is not a possibility
government spokesman Samad was prepared to
contemplate. "This is not about rivalry," he told
TIME walking away from the blast-scene on Saturday
night. "This is not an issue of one general attacking
a rival. It's clearly terrorists, they've just made
threats in the last few days and now they're carrying
them out. It's clear."
By Sunday morning, the office of military
intelligence had accepted the government position
that it was a terrorist strike. And despite having
inspected the crater that night and concurring with
an Italian officer from ISAF that a crude bomb had
been planted, the general's staff said the device was
a misdirected rocket.
But their amended version did not hold up for long
By 10am Sunday, ISAF confirmed a rocket had not
exploded, according to a specialist ordinance team.
The explosion had been caused by a bomb. "It doesn't
appear to have been intended to cause serious harm,"
ISAF spokesman Squadron Leader Terry Hay told a
briefing. "It seems to have been very much for
effect."
An investigation is continuing, but with two cabinet
ministers' assassinations and a string of Kabul
bombings as yet unsolved or unexplained it's not
expected any culprits will be found soon. And though
the list of suspects, as in all these incidents, is
long, an act of terrorism by re-grouping al-Qaeda or
Afghan opposition forces cannot be discounted.
Around Kabul over the 72 hours leading to Saturday
night's bombing, a 107mm rocket overshot one of the
largest ISAF installations in the city and a search
located twelve more that had misfired; a U.S. soldier
was shot by a sniper; and in Gardez, two hours to the
south, a video store was bombed and a rocket fired at
U.S. special forces. These rocket attacks have become
increasingly common, launched by timers as basic as a
punctured water bucket fixed to drain at a measured
speed and complete an electrical circuit, or as
sophisticated as electrical boards rigged in Pakistan
from VCR components and tripped by a mobile phone.
Though the rocket arsenals are plentiful, the
accuracy is far from guaranteed. And most Kabulis are
probably grateful.