Bomb blast at Kabul academy exposes rising hazard for minorities

A bomb blast has killed a minimum of 19 youngsters at a university in a Shia neighbourhood of Kabul, the most recent in a collection of assaults which have highlighted the rising insecurity and persecution of Afghanistan’s minorities because the Taliban took energy.

The obvious suicide attacker focused a packed examination corridor on Friday on the Kaaj Academy, the place lots of of scholars, together with many ladies, have been getting ready for college entrance exams, in response to native media and the BBC. The academy is positioned in a western Kabul neighbourhood with a big inhabitants from Afghanistan’s primarily Shia Hazara minority.

There have been dozens extra wounded and locals count on the variety of casualties to rise.

Nobody instantly claimed accountability for the assault, however Sunni extremists equivalent to Isis-Okay, the native department of the Center Jap terror organisation, have persistently focused Hazaras.

The Taliban, radical Sunnis who additionally lengthy persecuted the Hazaras, vowed to guard the minority after retaking energy in August final yr. However the spate of assaults on the Shia group has underscored the hazard Hazaras and different minorities face because the Taliban wrestle to regulate rival teams equivalent to Isis, with whom they’ve been engaged in a bloody battle of attrition since taking energy.

“This heinous act claimed the lives of dozens of adolescent ladies and boys and severely injured many extra,” Unicef stated in an announcement.

Academic institutions “should be havens of peace the place kids can study, be with pals, and really feel protected as they construct abilities for his or her futures. Youngsters and adolescents aren’t, and mustn’t ever be, the goal of violence”, the UN company added.

Isis assaults in opposition to Hazaras have killed or injured a minimum of 700 folks because the Taliban seized energy, Human Rights Watch stated this month, with mosques and faculties among the many frequent targets. Final month alone, Isis killed lots of of individuals in a collection of assaults throughout a Shia spiritual pageant.

A Taliban spokesperson stated the assault “proves the enemy’s inhuman cruelty and lack of ethical requirements”, in response to the BBC.

Whereas the Taliban have prevented teenage ladies from returning to highschool since taking energy — regardless of repeated vows on the contrary — girls can attend universities.

However a Hazara political science professor who teaches at a college in Kabul stated she feared that the rising sense of insecurity, marginalisation of girls and dire financial outlook underneath the Taliban have been threatening years of hard-won social progress.

“Earlier than there was an enormous wave of individuals getting into universities,” she stated. Now, “morale is low and women and men alike aren’t becoming a member of”.

Whereas the Taliban have dedicated to quashing terrorist exercise, worldwide officers stated these assurances have been fatally undermined after the US final month killed al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had been dwelling in central Kabul with the obvious safety of components of the Taliban.

Referring to the terrorist assaults, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, a senior US adviser for particular political affairs, instructed the UN Safety Council this week that “these occasions, coupled with the current revelation that the Taliban was sheltering the chief of al-Qaeda, underscore the significance of remaining clear-eyed in our dealings with the Taliban”.