Suicide bomber kills and wounds more than 100 people in mosque bombing in Afghanistan.

 

People gather near the scene of the bombing. UPI/EPA.

A suicide bomber killed and wounded more than 100 people at a mosque in Afghanistan, raising questions about the Taliban's control of the country. UPI. The attack occurred in Kunduz during prayers and was targeting Shiite Muslims. It is unclear if the death total is correct or if it also includes the wounded. ISIS took credit for the attack

Al-Jazeera claims that 72 people died in the attack while 140 were wounded, though those numbers may increase. Causalities may have increased due to slow response time from the Taliban, with ambulances taking 40 minutes to arrive. Most of the victims were young people. ISIS took credit for the attack and have been hard for the Taliban to track down as they now operate less like an army and more like a traditional terror group. 

My Comment:

This attack happened on Friday but I did not have a chance to write about it until now. Given the immense casualties and deaths and the significance of the attack I figured it was more important to cover the attack instead of another "Joe Biden is terrible" post. 

ISIS's Afghanistan affiliate has taken credit for the attack. That they were the perpetrators was pretty obvious from the start. ISIS has long been an enemy of Shiite Muslims, since they are Sunni extremists. The terror group has often targeted Shiite Muslims and bombing their mosques is a favored technique. This is far from the first of these kinds of attacks and I doubt it will be the last. 

The bigger aspect of this story is how incompetent the Taliban have been since taking over the country. They have not been able to stamp out ISIS and they have carried out several attacks since they began taking control of the country. And the response time to this attack was abysmal. It should not take 40 minutes for ambulances to arrive and I am guessing the poor health care in Afghanistan is a reason why so many people died from this attack. 

And it does seem like ISIS is no longer an army in Afghanistan and is instead acting more like a traditional terror group. This is bad news for the Taliban as if ISIS was still taking and holding territory it would be a much simpler thing to snuff them out. If they are operating in smaller cells, military force is less effective and you have to move to police methods. Given how poorly the Taliban seem to be running the country right now I doubt they will have the resources and experience necessary to hunt these terrorists down. 

Thankfully, I don't think this is anything other than a regional problem, for the moment. It's not our problem anymore since we have pulled out of Afghanistan. I know the Biden administration says they will launch strikes against ISIS if they get the opportunity but given how ISIS is acting now I doubt they will get that opportunity. They are going to stay underground and continue to launch attacks like this. 

I do fear that if ISIS starts to have more successful attacks like this they could end up rallying people to their cause. Though I don't think there is too much of a risk of them taking and holding territory anymore anything is possible and there is still a huge population of angry young Muslim men that would like to join up with ISIS. If the Taliban can't do anything against them it's possible they could become a larger threat again...