Three days after a bomb was found next to my office and I had to go down the bunker an NGO guard box was blown up with a hand grenade near my guesthouse and i ended up in a bunker again. These are the first incidents of targeting internationals in the north of Afghanistan for about two years.
DOWN THE BUNKER THE SECOND TIME
At 8.30pm Sunday night I was sitting in the guesthouse talking to some new guests when we heard an explosion. Monitoring our communication radio we discovered that it had come from two streets behind ours so we were down the bunker for the second time in three days.
As news gradually came through to us it seemed that a hand grenade had been thrown under a wooden guards box outside an NGO guesthouse near ours. The guard was taken to hospital injured but alive.
There is a lot of speculation about who is responsible but most agree it is not the Taliban but likely to be a disgruntled commander who is against disarmament and his subsequent loss of power. There is disarmament in progress in the north of Afghanistan. The two opposing warlords here, Mohamed Atta and General Dostum have been handing in weapons to the ministry of defence. The minister of defence is a member of Jumiat party as is Atta so he is more readily handing in weapons than Dostum. It is therefore in Dictum’s interest to destabilise the area. Looks like life may become less boring.
At 8.30pm Sunday night I was sitting in the guesthouse talking to some new guests when we heard an explosion. Monitoring our communication radio we discovered that it had come from two streets behind ours so we were down the bunker for the second time in three days.
As news gradually came through to us it seemed that a hand grenade had been thrown under a wooden guards box outside an NGO guesthouse near ours. The guard was taken to hospital injured but alive.
There is a lot of speculation about who is responsible but most agree it is not the Taliban but likely to be a disgruntled commander who is against disarmament and his subsequent loss of power. There is disarmament in progress in the north of Afghanistan. The two opposing warlords here, Mohamed Atta and General Dostum have been handing in weapons to the ministry of defence. The minister of defence is a member of Jumiat party as is Atta so he is more readily handing in weapons than Dostum. It is therefore in Dictum’s interest to destabilise the area. Looks like life may become less boring.
Comments
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Be careful
17.01.2004 09:10
Matt
Matt S
Needed update
17.01.2004 11:43
Nadia