Afghanistan which is a
battlefield for a long time is facing non-stop bombardment. The US support
Afghanistan army now also doing air strikes without considering people of
Afghanistan. They are only trying to demolish Taliban from their roots but they
don’t know they are making their own people against them.
The attack at the HashemiaMadrassa(religious school) by the Afghanistan
government in northern Kunduz province on April 2, scores a lot of casualties
and injuries including children. A graduation ceremony was carried out when
aerial bombardment starts on the Madrassa. The Afghan ministry of defense
insisted that the air strike target the Taliban who were plotting an attack on
the military.
There is conflict in the number of casualties because insurgents itself counting
deaths. The attendees are of the view that there is the dozen of fatalities. A
chef which was making food for the ceremony when asked said that he had been
preparing food for 2,000 people. Which shows that there is the number of
casualties in this attack.
An eyewitness, Qari Abdul Rahim describe the attack in the Dasht-e-Archi
district of Kunduz to the media that he was sitting in the third row. He saw an
aircraft above his head. He saw smoke under the aircraft and run towards the
door. He somehow managed to escape from school. He returned to the building
after the air strike where he saw an abundance of dead bodies. The dead bodies
were also scattered on the roads including children as they tried to run from
the air strike but couldn’t make it.
Footages and pictures were released by the Taliban to show departed souls and
wounded children being buried and taking to the hospital. The Taliban which have
a number of victories on the battlefield had said that there is no member of
Taliban was present at the time of the ceremony. The statement of Taliban is
contradicting government’s statement.
Many of the people who were killed in the attack are also not recognizable and
that is why it would be difficult to identify that they were Taliban fighters or
civilians.
Afghan Defense Ministry spokesperson Mohammed Radmanish told a news conference
in Kabul that aerial footage and images showed the Taliban gathered at a
compound with vehicles and motorcycles brandishing Taliban and Pakistani flags.
He added that 35 Taliban, including 18 commanders, were among the dead.
Several witnesses were of the view that the gathering was at the Madrassa where
boys were graduating having learned to read and write Arabic verses of the Quran.
Which is totally opposite to the statements of Afghanistan Government. As
reports emerged that civilians had been killed in the airstrikes, the United
Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) tweeted that it was “actively
looking into disturbing reports of serious harm to civilians.”
By Tuesday, the office of President Ashraf Gani issued a statement conceding
that, while the army had carried out the operation “in order to save people from
a huge disaster,” civilians had died in the airstrikes, and ordered an official
investigation.
According to the Afghanistan TOLO News, in a session of parliament, the
opposition party strongly criticized this government act of air strike and force
to a proper investigation of this attack.
The house speaker, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, said, “There is no doubt that the
Taliban were also present there, but to be honest, such a move against a madrasa
— where religion is taught — is not acceptable.”
Taliban also give the statement that the director of the ceremony was in the
support of Taliban and prayed for the goodwill of Taliban and to implement
Sharia in the whole country but he was not the member of Taliban.
Kunduz, which the Taliban briefly seized in 2015, was the scene of one of the
most serious civilian casualty incidents in the Afghanistan conflict, when U.S.
airstrikes destroyed a hospital, killing 42 people, mostly patients, and medical
staff.
Initially, the city wThe Taliban, which has been fighting the U.S.-backed
government in Kabul since being driven out of power after the 2001 U.S.-led
invasion, controls much of the surrounding province.as considered secure as
compare to the other parts of the country but it remains vulnerable.
There are few lessons that can be learned anew in a war that has gone on for
nearly two decades. But it is patently obvious that counter-insurgencies cannot
inflict massive damage and destruction on the very people it hopes to rescue
from the militants. Shocking attacks, such as the one in Kunduz on Monday,
coming so late in a war against the Afghan Taliban can have significant and
widespread negative effects on the population. Questions such as whether the
Afghan state is any better than the Taliban who terrorize swathes of the
population may be asked with fresh urgency among the people. Moreover, the
possibility of a spirit of revenge taking hold among the surviving victims and
families of the dead and injured could be exploited by the Taliban. There is a
reason why previous US administrations have at times hesitated to use
indiscriminate weapons in Afghanistan: the risk of a terrible error tends to be
greater than the gains of a successful strike. The Trump administration and
Kabul should urgently reconsider the new, looser rules of military engagement.