A suicide bomber walked into the Abd al-Rabb Mosque in the southwestern city of Qandahar, Afghanistan, at 9 am Wednesday morning and detonated his payload, killing nearly 20 and wounding dozens. The mosque was holding a commemoration for a slain cleric, killed last week, who opposed the Taliban.
The bombing comes against the backdrop of a Taliban spring offensive. Taliban forces launched three attacks on US troops on Monday and took casualties. On Sunday, they clashed with the Afghanistan government troops. Each side claims to have killed 9 of the other, but independent sources quoted by Reuters support the Taliban claim that 9 government troops died in the encounter.
On Monday, a roadside bomb targetting a Nato convoy in Kabul instead killed 7 Afghans.
The reports out of Afghanistan are extremely worrying. It seems clear that the Taliban have learned from observing events in Iraq, and are developing a similar strategy of targetted bombings to destabilize the country and force US troops out.
In switching his attention from Afghanistan to Iraq so abruptly in November, 2001, Bush opened a second front. Second fronts are always problematic, and sometimes they are fatal.
Juan Coles commentary has the kind of bold face courage and practical realism that's missing from mainstream media. Here is makes the obvious statement about a second front, one that has not only be ignored by Rumsfeld planning but also by news commentary. Although it was obvious to me from the time I heard of Bush's ambition for Iraq, no one dares ask the tough questions of the President. What has happened to our free press?
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