Carnage in Kabul: Graeme Smith: Taliban forces 'franchised' and Mostly Afghan Based
by The Real News
A suicide car bomb ripped through the gates of the Indian Embassy in Kabul on Monday. Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday condemned the attack that killed 41 people and wounded 150.
It was the deadliest blast in Kabul since the fall of
the Taliban in 2001. Afghanistan was quick to blame Pakistan but
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Gillani denied that its intelligence service
was behind the attack. The Real News spoke with Graeme Smith of the
Globe and Mail in Kandahar to learn more.
Transcript
VOICEOVER: Afghanistan's foreign ministry on Tuesday condemned the
suicide bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. It was the
deadliest blast since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Forty-one people
were killed and 150 were wounded. Afghanistan quickly blamed Pakistan,
but Pakistan's prime minister, Gillani, denied that its intelligence
service was behind the attack. The Real News spoke with Graeme Smith of
The Globe and Mail in Kandahar.
GRAEME SMITH, THE GLOBE AND MAIL: The Afghans have been increasingly
blunt in recent months in their accusations about support for the
insurgency coming from Pakistan. But, you know, frankly, among people
that follow the insurgency here, you know, they've [inaudible] two
lines. You know, on one hand, yes, Taliban are staging their operations
in Pakistan, they're receiving support inside the Pakistani border. But
on the other hand, you know, a lot of the people who are launching
these attacks are Afghans.
And I think there's a feeling that the
insurgency is largely not what they call exogenous, meaning the
momentum of the insurgency is largely coming from within Afghanistan.
One of the things, though, that I think has been driving the spread of
the insurgency, certainly in the last two years, has been what they
call the franchise expansion. So a lot of different groups are now
fighting against the Afghan government, but those different groups
don't necessarily take orders from the same place. You know, a lot of
them might swear allegiance to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the
Taliban, but in practice a lot of these are fairly semi-autonomous
[inaudible] units. We're in the middle of the largest wave of violence
this country has seen since the fall of the Taliban regime and
actually, probably, the largest wave of violence this country has seen
probably in the last decade or so.
Bio
Graeme Smith has devoted more time to southern Afghanistan than any
other Western journalist, since the arrival of NATO forces in that
region. Hired by The Globe and Mail in 2001, the war in southern
Afghanistan became his full-time project in mid-2006. His awards
include the Canadian Association of Journalists' prize for
investigative reporting; the Amnesty International award for Canadian
print journalism; and the 2007 Michener Award.
DISCLAIMER:
Please note that TRNN transcripts are typed from a recording of the
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