After Serena, not so serene

The attack on a fortified hotel in Kabul is a pointer. After six years of reconstruction, why is insecurity increasing in ravaged Afghanistan?

Aunohita Mojumdar Kabul   

An attack on Kabul's swish Serena Hotel earlier this week may have seemed like yet another incident of violence to most outside observers. But for those living in Afghanistan it represented yet another level of escalation in the ongoing violent conflict. It was not that the attack was on the rich and elite of Kabul city, nor that the attack targeted expatriates in contrast to the daily attacks which kill Afghans everyday, but that it breached one of the most fortified sites in the capital, the poshest hotel in Kabul, rebuilt by the Mumbai-based firm Shapoorji Pallonji. The attack showed the reach of the anti-government elements. This was no straightforward suicide bombing, the one phenomenon against which most security agencies say they have no defence. This was an armed attack which allowed the entry of  gunmen who managed to carry out a shooting spree before they were stopped.

Though Afghanistan has been a 'post conflict' State for more than six years since the ouster of the Taliban in the American-led attack, violence has worsened in many parts of the country while parts of southern Afghanistan are embattled by continuous conflict. Sporadically, districts of the southern provinces slip out of the tenuous hold of the Hamid Karzai government into the control of the Taliban — till yet another pitched battle frees the area. Kabul the capital, relatively incident free in the first two years after the removal of the Taliban, now sees sporadic incidents of violence in the form of rocket attacks, shootings, kidnappings, bomb explosions and suicide bombings that seem to be increasing their penetrating power.

Unlike Iraq, the 'invasion' of Afghanistan had considerable support among sections of the Afghan population. However, like Iraq, America's military intervention there had more to do with its own politics and rather less to do with Afghanistan. The direct military response to 9/11, saw the removal of the Taliban, the regime which had lent support and shelter to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda operatives. That the Taliban also had a wretched human rights record and a worse record on women's rights helped build the case for the military intervention.

Unfortunately, the inability to broaden this narrow objective has meant that much of what has happened in Afgha-nistan in the past six years has had more to do with donor-driven interests and less  with the ground reality in the country.

It is no one's case that Afghanistan has not benefited from six years of 'reconstruction'. In a country where almost all infrastructure and economy had been destroyed, gains, though incremental, are clearly visible. Hundreds of schoolchildren including young girls going to school, millions of refugees returning to the country, greater access to health and the buzz of new construction. A new Constitution was introduced, a presidential election and a parliamentary election were held with less disruption than any of the Bihar polls. Visitors to Kabul might be forgiven for thinking the country has turned around, and all that is needed to spread the prosperity is time. They would be wrong.