Suicide bomber kills chief of Kunar’s peace council

A suicide bomber killed the chief of Afghanistan’s peace council in the Taliban haven of Kunar province. The attack is the latest to target government officials and security personnel throughout the country.

Maulavi Mohammad Hashem Munib, the head of the High Peace Council in Kunar province, and his son were killed in an attack in the watahpur district earlier today as they traveled home from a local mosque, according to Pajwhok Afghan News. The watahpur Valley has been the scene of major clashes between US and insurgent forces over the past several years.

The Taliban have not released a statement claiming credit for the attack.

The Afghan High Peace Council is tasked with facilitating reconciliation between the government and Afghan insurgent groups such at the Taliban, Hizb-i-Islam Gulbuddin, and the Haqqani Network.

The Taliban have spurned the efforts of the High Peace Council, and assassinated the national leader and former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani in a suicide attack in September 2011.

Today’s suicide attack is the latest in a series of killings by the Taliban that have targeted security forces and government officials nationwide. Also today, the Taliban killed four policemen in three separate attacks in Helmand province.

Yesterday a Taliban suicide bomber killed Nazik Mir, an influential commander of the Afghan Local Police in Kisham district in Badakhshan. The same day, the Taliban killed eight members of the Afghan local police and captured two more in Faryab’s Khaki Safed district.

On April 4, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 12 people, including three US soldiers and four Afghan policemen, in an attack in Mamiama, the provincial capital of Faryab.

On March 30, a member of the Afghan Local Police who is reportedly a Taliban infiltrator killed nine of his colleagues as they slept. He poisoned them first, then gunned them down and stole their weapons. And on March 26, a member of the ALP gunned down an ISAF soldier at a checkpoint in the east.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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3 Comments

  • Eddie D. says:

    Why are they trying to talk to these idiots about peace. The Taliban, Al- Queda and the other terrorist groups only know about bombs or bullets, or beheadings…….pretty much all the b’s.Why don’t we discuss things on their terms and be done with it. So what if some innocent people get in the way?, they are already in the way.

  • jean says:

    I knew this guy. Good man, trying do to right by his people and his country. He is the second head of the peace council to be killed in Kunar. Hate to loose the good ones. AQ is making some smart moves in Kunar, they don’t kill the dumb or corrupt officials.

  • Devin Leonard says:

    All the more reason to abandon this peace negotiation nonsense. This isn’t the IRA we are dealing with. these are people who CAN’T be negotiated with. But we can hunt them down and kill them, and that’s what we need to keep doing!

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