By Elsa Imdad
Pieces of broken glass, burned notebooks, bloodstained walls, children’s shoes, and asphyxiating chaos: these are the scenes from a boys’ school in Dasht-e-Barchi, a Hazara-majority neighborhood, that got bombed on April 19, 2022. The explosions took place outside Abdul Rahim Shaheed High School and a few kilometers away from Mumtaz Education Center. At the education center, there were no reports of casualties, while six students lost their lives and nearly 20 were wounded in the blast at school.
Although no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far, there are assumptions that the Islamic State of Khurasan Province (ISKP), an offshoot of ISIS, was involved, as the group has carried out most of the terror activities in the past several months.
Since assuming power on August 15, 2021, the Taliban claim that peace has returned to Afghanistan, but many analysts warn there is still a risk of terrorism revival. The Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks.
For the past several months, the Taliban have been reiterating a narrative that a lot of damage was caused to the country in the last two decades by proxies, foreign interference, corrupt governments, etc. It is a lamentation that does not seem to be ending anytime sooner. The irony is that it has been seven months since the de facto government got hold of the affairs of the state, but it has not moved past the old baggage and keeps using that as an excuse for the current fragile state of security.
Of course, it would be unrealistic to expect the Taliban to completely wipe off terrorism from the Afghan soil as they lack the capacity to do so but one can at least expect them to address the volatile security situation on a priority basis and declutter themselves of the old narrative of highlighting demons of the past. “Remorse is the poison of life. Reformation is its solution”, wrote Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre. It is high time the Taliban own their responsibilities as a government and take immediate measures to maintain peace in Afghanistan.
The recognition can wait, but the people of Afghanistan who yearn for peace cannot. The Taliban are responsible for the security and prosperity of Afghanistan: they must ‘act’ now!
Elsa Imdad is a USG Alumna. She holds a bachelors in modern languages with an English major and Spanish minor. She has previously been part of American Spaces in Pakistan and now works as a Project Coordinator at the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), where she also comanages Afghan Studies Center. Besides, she is a weekly contributor to the political section of Matrix. Her interests include public diplomacy, global politics, language teaching, peace and conflict resolution, capacity building for marginalized groups, etc.
