Afghanistan Blames Pakistan for Planning Deadly Kabul Attack

Afghan intelligence services admit they knew an attack was coming, but blame the government next door for organizing it.

By Richi Kumar @ ForeignPolicy.com, June 1

[....] Just hours after the explosion, the NDS pointed to the Haqqani Network, an insurgent group in the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands that shares close ties with the Taliban, as the perpetrators. But Afghan intelligence lay ultimate blame with their Pakistani counterpart, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which it claimed had planned the blast. [....]

Afghan-Pakistani relations have become exceptionally strained in the past few years precisely because of Afghan suspicions about such support. Afghan leaders have repeatedly called for strikes by the international community — meaning the United States — on safe havens in Pakistan. And over the past year, Pakistan has forcibly repatriated 600,000 refugees back to Afghanistan. Frequent border skirmishes between the armed forces of each side have worsened the tensions.

The NDS minced no words in its statement. “These terrorists once again proved they don’t represent any religion and they only carry out such coward attacks to please their Pakistani masters which is against all Islamic and human rights principals [sic],” it read. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ran with the accusations against Pakistan in a blazing speech on Wednesday night. In a decree issued earlier Thursday, he ordered the hanging of 11 Haqqani Network and Taliban prisoners.

But the Taliban denies any connection to this week’s incident. “This explosion has nothing to do with the Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate,” a statement on their website read. “Islamic Emirate condemns every explosion and attack carried out against civilians, or in which civilians are harmed and has no legitimate target,” they added. Pakistan has called the claims “baseless.”

The NDS is also in urgent need of a clear culprit after its failure to prevent the bombing. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a government official told Foreign Policy that the agency was aware the blast was coming. “We knew about a possible attack targeting the Wazir Akbar Khan area as far back as May 21,” the official revealed. Security around the area had been ramped up, with additional checkpoints set up in anticipation of the explosion. “But we weren’t expecting a truck bomb — we were looking for a Corolla or a similar car carrying explosives. We failed to identify the threat,” the source admitted.

While trucks, buses, and larger vehicles are prohibited in that area of Kabul, the explosives were loaded onto a septic tanker, believed to have been contracted privately by one of the diplomatic missions in the area. “Such a truck would also require a clearance document to be able to enter that area,” the official told Foreign Policy. “We are currently investigating if the insurgents used a fake clearance card, or if they managed to get access to an original from one of the embassies.”

While the Afghan government blames Pakistan, many Afghans are speculating about a different culprit — the Islamic State. The terrorist group moved heavily into Afghanistan last year, carrying out a series of lethal assaults in Kabul and elsewhere [....]