A dramatic Taliban assault on the heart of Kabul inflicted relatively little damage, but scored an important strategic victory for insurgents who showed again they can strike at will, analysts said.
The United States ambassador to Afghanistan dismissed the raid, which left 15 dead and six foreign troops wounded, as “not a very big deal” in a ten-year war launched to dislodge the Taliban’s ultra-Islamist regime.
But Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Society Project, described the coordinated attacks — the latest in a string on Western targets in Kabul — as a psychological “disaster” for NATO and Afghan forces.
“Its scale, length, and audacity, whatever the actual damage it caused, makes it significant,” he wrote of the hail of rockets, grenades and suicide blasts that plunged the city into chaos.
Writing on the website Registan.net, Foust said the audacious 19-hour raid was the latest sign of the foreign and national militaries’ “inability to counter an insurgency hell bent on disrupting the capital.”
For the insurgents “it is an operational failure, but a media and therefore strategic success”, a Western military source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“Their aim is to show that they have the edge… and that no part of Afghan territory is out of their range,” the source added.
This year has seen a number of high-profile insurgent attacks including a suicide bombing on the British Council cultural body last month and the storming of the luxury Intercontinental Hotel in June.
But the “intensity and scope” of the latest raid “was unexpected,” said Afghanistan Analysts Network researcher Fabrizio Foschini.
Foust said that since the start of 2011, “the attacks in Kabul have become more intense, lasted longer, demonstrated better intelligence and tactics on the part of the insurgency, and struck ever more supposedly secure targets.”
The Taliban’s tactics amount to “propaganda of the deed, of using their assaults to send a very deliberate message to the Afghan people: you are not safe, you are not secure, and the West cannot protect you,” he added.
The attacks have sown further doubt among Afghans over the ability of their own security forces to protect the nation after 2014 when the last of the foreign combat troops are due to leave under a phased drawdown.
The insurgents have “put their effort into the areas where the transition process has already started and in Kabul, the place where there is the most powerful media impact,” the Western military source said.
Suspicions of complicity between the Taliban and elements within the Afghan security services have been heightened by the rampage in Kabul, with signs that information leaks and infiltration in security services are increasing.
That the Taliban could move men and weapons — including rockets, an 82mm mortar and a machine-gun, according to the interior ministry — so close to the city’s most sensitive locations indicates “possible collusion”, a Western diplomat told AFP.
Foschini from the Afghanistan Analysts Network said the chaos in the city could further poison the atmosphere surrounding the presence of US-led foreign forces.
“The possible perception among Afghan residents that the presence of foreigners is a catalyst for attacks may lead to a growing conclusion that the problems related to their presence far outweigh the benefits,” he said.
