Hindu Voice UK, August 2008

On Monday 7th July, the Indian embassy in Kabul was targeted in the bloodiest suicide attack seen in Afghanistan for over three years. At least 44 people were killed, including four Indian nationals, and many Afghan civilians. The embassy premises were totally blown up. The blast could be heard all across the city centre and sent a cloud of smoke which could be seen for many miles.

Afghanistan has seen a regrouping and resurgent Taliban, which has increasingly put the new pro-west regime under pressure. However a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied Taliban involvement. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, blamed the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence services, for involvement in the atrocity, a charge which was vociferously denied by Pakistan.

India has been a close ally of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, which was avowedly hostile to India, and has invested crores of rupees in helping rebuild the country.

Afghanistan was an important outpost of Hindu civilization up until the 12th century, when the Hindu kingdoms were defeated by Turkish and Arabic invaders, who brought the land under Islam. Since then there has been a steady decline in the number of Hindus in Afghanistan, with no more than a few thousand remaining today. The remnant Afghan Hindus were treated particularly brutally by the Taliban regime, which made them wear yellow armbands to identify themselves, reminiscent of the treatment meted out to Jews in Nazi Germany prior to the Holocaust. This resulted in further outmigration of this community to India and to a lesser extent Britain.