Serious bomb attack in Kabul - Afghanistan is not safe

On Wednesday – following the serious bomb attack in the diplomatic district of Kabul – the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) demanded an end to the deportations of refugees to Afghanistan. “It is irresponsible to send helpless refugees back to a country in which they have to fear for their lives every day,” stated Ulrich Delius, the Director of the STP in Göttingen. “The fact that a serious terrorist attack like the last one could be carried out in the highly secured residential area of foreign diplomats shows that the civilian population of Afghanistan is not safe – not even in the capital. Anyone who sends rejected asylum seekers to Afghanistan under these conditions is willing to accept that they could get killed. What else has to happen before the German policy makers will acknowledge that the country is a war zone?”

At least 49 people got killed and 320 persons were injured in the terrorist attack near the German Embassy in Kabul on Wednesday. On May 27, 2017, a total number of 13 people lost their lives in an attack in the city of Khost in the east of Afghanistan. On May 26, only one day before, 15 soldiers died in a Taliban attack on an army base in Kandahar province – and about 140 soldiers were killed in an attack on a military base in Mazar-I-Sharif on April 21, 2017. “The list of terrible terrorist attacks continues, documenting the catastrophic security situation in Afghanistan,” said Delius. “Today’s attack clearly shows that, as the country is increasingly in the grip of a civil war, Kabul cannot be seen as a safe enclave – as many German politicians have been trying to purport.” The attacks by the Taliban are not only directed against the army, the police, aid workers, and foreign soldiers, but also and especially against the population group of the Hazara, who often become victims of terrorist attacks.

Another aspect that shows how much the security situation in the country has deteriorated is the significant increase in US air raids against alleged Taliban positions in Afghanistan. With 900 registered missions, the number of US bombardments between January and April 2017 is three times as high as in the same period of last year. The STP is deeply concerned about the fact that the number of civilian air raid victims has increased enormously as well. By the end of April, 72 civilians had lost their lives and 76 were injured, while only eight people were killed and 21 injured in the same period of 2016. A total of 250 civilians were killed in US air raids in 2016, and 340 were injured.

Header Photo: Brian Hillegas via Wikimedia Commons