They were everyone’s darling, keeping the family busy with their baby talk and adorable smiles. That’s exactly what they were doing when the US drone struck the Khaja Boqra residential neighbourhood next to Kabul’s international airport, killing the two baby girls—Sumaya and Malika (both aged 2 years)—and eight other family members. The US drone attack was targeted at a vehicle believed to be carrying suspected ISIS-K suicide bombers.
The US Central Command described the attack as a defensive airstrike to foil an “imminent” threat to the Kabul International airport.
While the bodies of the others were found inside the house, Malika’s remains were found from rubble near their home. A brother of the one of those killed told the media, “they were an ordinary family… we are not ISIS or Daesh and this was a family home…”
Some of those who knew the two girls are calling them Shaheedas, to mark their deaths as a sacrifice for the nation. They along with other two others kids who were also killed in the strike—Binyamen (3), Armin (4)—now join the list of thousands of children who have died in such US drone or Taliban rocket attacks in the past 20 years. But most importantly, their death brings to fore the bigger picture—that of the past 20 years of war in Afghanistan and what it has left behind.
‘What Have We Gained?’
The capture of Kabul by Taliban on August 15, the hasty process of evacuation by the US and the display of terror—the twin bomb blasts at the Kabul airport, the killing of Afghan folk singer Fawad Andarabi in Baghlan or the drone strike by the US forces which wiped out a family—can only but bring back memories of the Taliban rule between 1996 and 2001 and the prolonged war after that.
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“What else have we gained so far,” asks Najla Ayubi, a fearless Afghan woman activist. Similar sentiments are shared by others who feel that the death of the two baby girls represents how “the common and the ordinary Afghan” lives her life, caught in a “proxy” war that is not their own, but which has claimed thousands of Afghan lives.
This is not to say that the lives of the US servicemen and marines who were killed in the Kabul airport bomb blasts were not important. Their deaths were equally painful, after all they were only doing their duty to secure the airport and carry out the evacuation process. As also the lives of roughly 2,500 US military who, according to Reuters, died in the Afghan war since 2001.
But after 20 years of stay in Afghanistan, with huge investments in military infrastructure and military training to Afghan forces, in setting up private security companies, and in democracy building projects, how does the present mess explain all these years of investment and effort. Most importantly, how does it explain the security and protection that was promised to the people of Afghanistan, including the two young Shaheedas, who became collateral damage in a war the US fought aimlessly.
A UN report released recently says that more women and children were killed and wounded in Afghanistan in the first half of 2021 than in the first six months of any year since 2009. The report also says that women and children made up close to half of 1,659 civilian casualties, based on a mid-year update by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The report also notes a particularly sharp rise in casualties in May this year when international military forces began withdrawing from the country and fighting intensified following the Taliban offensive to take territory from government forces.
A statement by the UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet issued on August 10 cited a UNICEF report that claimed a “rapid escalation of violations against children in Afghanistan, following the deaths of 27 children in the country in the past 72 hours, and 136 who were injured.” “But the real figure could be much higher,” said Bachelet.
‘Who Will Answer for This Mess?’
Today, there are more questions than answers, and all that US President Joe Biden has been saying is it’s a process he had followed through, taking on from his predecessor. “That’s not enough Mr President, you must answer for the mess,” says Negha who grew up escaping drone or rocket attacks close to where she stayed in Kabul and her workplace. Finally, she left the country to settle in Europe or else she or someone she knew could have met the same fate as that of the Shaheeda sisters and their family.
However, the international world seems oblivious to the lives that have been lost. US President Biden, for instance, remains defiant and declared victory post the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.
In an email sent to this author, a wife of a US marine (who served in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2009) after reading the story of Shoora Amiri, a women’s rights and democracy activist who was injured in the Kabul airport blast, published on News18, had this to say: “He watched many of the men he served with die in his arms (both US troops and Afghan citizens), and it still haunts him every day.” “But right now, more than anything, he is bitterly angry that the Afghans that helped him and his team are either stuck in the country being taken over by the Taliban, or being murdered. He’s stopped reading the news completely even though it doesn’t really help.”
“What did we do to deserve this,” wrote well-known media and leading women’s activist Najiba Ayubi in her Facebook post recently. She is in hiding and like many other women fears for her life. Her younger sister Najla Ayubi who stays abroad could only say this: “I don’t know what to say, I have no energy to talk with all that is happening.”
A lot has been said already after the last of the US troops left on the night of August 31. The UNSC met and adopted a watered down resolution, which was more about principles than any operative significance. US State Secretary Antony Blinken read out the same list of dos and don’ts for the Talban to gain “international legitimacy”. These include ensuring freedom of travel for people, especially those wanting to go out of Afghanistan, counter-terrorism measures, respecting basic rights of Afghans, especially women and minorities.
For many Afghans what is surprising is “how easily some countries (read the US and Pakistan) get away with murder”. Echoing the words of caretaker president of Afghanistan Amrullah Saleh, who is a key figure in the joint resistance against Taliban in Panjshir, that “Afghanistan wasn’t packed and put in the bag of the last US solider”, Shoora Amiri who was injured in the Kabul blast claimed the chaotic evacuation process was “part of a design”.
A close aide of former Afghanistan presidents Hamid Karzai and Asraf Ghani and a former consul general to a neighbouring country termed the recent events as “all show by the US that they are still the superpower, they don’t care about human lives”. According to the former Afghan diplomat, if the US had intel about the ISIS-K operating inside Afghanistan soil, “why did it not take pre-emptive actions, why suddenly two days before the evacuation process. It is too much of a coincidence.”
The Shaheeda sisters and their equally young brothers are not around to see what will happen next. But given how the events have unfolded over the past one month, especially the Biden administration’s desperate attempts to legitimise the Taliban, which not to forget includes the US- and UN-proscribed Haqqani network overseeing security operations on the ground, the days ahead will possibly see more children and parents live a life that has been described by many as “living in hell”.
The author is a former senior journalist and an expert on international affairs. He has spent considerable time in Afghanistan. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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