No big deal? US ambassador gives Afghan assault a baffling reception

Ryan Crocker was in bullish mood following the 20-hour militant assault on Kabul, but, around him, citizens are suffering To Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, a 20-hour assault on Kabul from militants firing from a high-rise building on the US embassy and Nato compound while suicide bombers targeted police buildings across the city was “not a very big deal”. Earlier in the week he had told the Washington Post in an interview that the Afghan capital’s biggest problem was the traffic . The attack that began on Tuesday and concluded Wednesday morning with the killing of the last of seven Taliban fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and automatic weapons had at least solved that problem. Streets were relatively scant of vehicles as many Kabulis steered clear out of fear of more attacks, or as Crocker put it, “harassment” in the form of the RPGs. “That isn’t Tet,” he said, in reference to the offensive in Vietnam. Putting the two wars in the same sentence, even as a contrast, was unlikely to have been approved by his media advisers. “If that’s the best they can do, you know, I think it’s actually a statement of their weakness and more importantly since Kabul is in the hands of Afghan security it’s a real credit to the Afghan national security forces,” Crocker said. Later, he released a statement, with a more measured tone, that mourned the civilians, police and foreign forces killed or wounded and praised the security personnel that were “up to the task of thwarting such operations”. Yet few ordinary Afghans see it that way. They struggle to understand how the attackers could get so close with such an arsenal. They believe the militants have help on the inside of their indigenous security forces. And their trust in their own government is such that many don’t even believe the “official” death tolls following terrorist attacks. Kabul shopkeeper Mohammad Bashir Suleiman Khil summed up the thoughts of many. “Every 10 days there are attacks in Kabul,” he said. “There is no work, there is no business. People are not coming out of their homes today. We don’t have any hope here.” The Arabic-speaking Crocker, coaxed out of retirement by President Barack Obama, returned to Afghanistan this year as head of the embassy he reopened in 2002. He has had front-row seats to several attacks on or near US embassies over his long diplomatic career, which might explain his initial take on the 20-hour siege. He escaped a Beirut truck bomb that killed 60 at the US embassy in 1983, was airlifted from the same location eight years later because of terrorist fears and was bunkered down when protesters attacked the US embassy in Damascus in 1998. On the day he was sworn in as the US’s top man in Iraq in 2007, suicide bombers struck, killing 104 people in the city. Afghanistan United States Jeremy Kelly guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 14, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.