Kabul, Afghanistan was rocked by a suicide attack at a Shia Muslim mosque that killed 30 people and wounded more than 90 on Monday. The Baqir ul Olum mosque was hit as worshipers were gathering for a service to commemorate the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, Hussein, who is revered by Shias.
The attack is the latest in a string of sectarian incidents in Afghanistan against the minority Shia sect. While no group has claimed this attack, the target would appear to be a trademark of ISIS who have launched a series of similar attacks in recent months.
The war in Afghanistan is the longest of at least five that Donald Trump’s administration will inherit. It is also the longest war in American history. Around $600 billion in American taxpayer money has already gone to the war effort and efforts to rebuild Afghanistan. And the new administration’s policy decisions could define not only the American legacy in the region but the future of the Afghan state.
The U.S. was initially set to withdraw from Afghanistan at the end of 2016 but President Obama backtracked on his initial plan and is leaving more troops in the country due to the Afghan government’s fragility. The government is prone to infighting and key security institutions are riddled with vacancies that have a crippling effect on the nation’s efforts to counter the Taliban, the main foe of Afghanistan’s current government.
Earlier this year, the Taliban controlled more land than at any other time since 2001. Six of 34 provinces are also at risk of falling to the Taliban, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. The U.S. is still sending in Special Forces operatives to work with America-trained Afghan troops and prevent the Taliban from taking those provinces. With up to 30,000 operatives, the Taliban is proving an effective foil to the Afghan government, and it seems that the Afghan government is ill prepared to carry on the fight without American support.
The incoming Trump administration will be crucial in ensuring whether the Afghan government can maintain legitimacy in the face of the Taliban. The U.S. is elbow-deep in Afghanistan, and supporting the government against the Taliban is just part of its mission.
The U.S. has been targeting ISIS leaders with drone strikes in Afghanistan, but that hasn’t stopped the group from making inroads in the region. It has accumulated somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 members in Afghanistan and attacks like Monday’s are becoming a regularity.
“In July this year, a suicide bomber targeted ethic Hazaras, who are mostly Shiite, as they marched through central Kabul to protest discrimination,” AP reported. “At least 80 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded in that attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group.”
“The Trump administration will need to hit the ground running in Afghanistan.”
In October, militants attacked another Shia ceremony at a shrine in Kabul killing 17 people, according to AP. A day later in Mazer-e Sharif in northern Balkh province, 14 people were killed in a similar attack. ISIS claimed one of those attacks.
Sectarian violence is incredibly rare in Afghanistan when compared to in countries like Iraq, but the emergence of a group like ISIS could aggravate decade-old ethnic tensions, Reuters reported.
With the Obama administration on the way out in January, it is unclear how the new administration will handle Afghanistan. Virtually unmentioned in the debates, Afghanistan is often referred to as the “forgotten war.” But Trump and his team will have some serious decisions to make post-inauguration.
The U.S. must “…either escalate its involvement in the Afghan conflict — by sending in more troops or increasing the tempo of airstrikes and Special Forces operations — or risk allowing the Taliban to capture several Afghan provinces next year,” Jessica Donati and Habib Khan Totakhil wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week.
The reasons behind such a drastic ultimatum, Donati and Totakhil write, are because of a “crumbling” Afghan state, and Afghan soldiers who are evidently reluctant to fight. Some soldiers feel as though their lives are cannon fodder for a central government with no plan to beat back the Taliban. Afghan security forces have been hit by more than 15,000 casualties this year and over 5,500 of those have died, according to government figures.
“The Trump administration will need to hit the ground running in Afghanistan,” Shawn Snow, a specialist in the political and military developments of Central and Southwest Asia, wrote in the Diplomat. “The new administration has the ability to capitalize on some of Afghanistan’s progress by maintaining support to the Afghan military, engaging key stakeholders, and spearheading Afghanistan’s international efforts to cultivate shared economic interests with its neighbors, ensuring the landlocked nation does not revert back into a cycle of warlordism, instability and a safe haven for terrorist groups. Now is not the time to abandon Afghanistan.”