Taliban suicide bomber assassinates senior politician in Afghan north

The Taliban have claimed credit for a suicide attack in northern Afghanistan that killed the head of the provincial council in Baghlan province.

The suicide bomber, who was dressed in a police uniform, attacked and killed Mohammad Rasol Mohseni as he was walking into his office today at a government compound in Pul-e-Khumri, the provincial capital. Also killed were 13 others, including his assistant, four bodyguards, and eight civilians.

The Taliban claimed credit for the attack in a statement that was emailed to reporters.

“Today at 11 am in front of the Baghlan provincial council office, we have carried out a suicide attack and killed the head of the council,” the Taliban said in the statement, which was sent by spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid.

Today’s bombing in Baghlan is the second major suicide attack in Afghanistan in the past five days. On May 16, a suicide bomber from the Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin killed six Americans and nine Afghans in an attack in Kabul. The Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin is a Taliban and al Qaeda-linked group that fights in Afghanistan.

The Taliban had said it would continue to target both NATO forces as well as Afghan security personnel and government officials when it announced its latest ‘spring offensive’ at the end of April.

In the announcement, the Taliban said it would continue to infiltrate Coalition and Afghan bases to conduct “martyrdom operations,” or suicide attacks.

In the announcement of “Khalid bin Waleed spring operation,” the Taliban also warned Afghans to “stay away from the bases of the invaders, their residential areas or working for them in order to avoid civilian losses.” Additionally, the Taliban called on “all the officials and workers of the stooge Karzai regime to break away from this decaying administration.”

The Taliban and its ally, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, have conducted numerous assassinations in the Afghan north over the past several years. Some of the more prominent assassinations include the killing of the top Afghan police commander in the north, General Daud Daud, and his former Shura-e-Nazar deputy, Shah Jahan Noori, on May, 28 2011; and the murder of Kunduz Governor Mohammad Omar in Tahkar on Oct. 8, 2010. Both men were killed in suicide attacks.

In February 2012, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security identified the existence of a Taliban cell that specialized in assassinations in the Afghan north. The cell is led by Qari Abdul Rahim, a Taliban commander who is based in Peshawar, Pakistan, and who is linked to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Rahim’s cell supports terrorist operations in Kunduz, Badakhshan, and Baghlan provinces.

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

  • blert says:

    This tells us that the grand strategy of the ISI/Taliban is complete anarchy.
    One of the primary reasons that America did not target the Japanese Emperor was so that he could ‘shut off the war.’
    If the ISI is able to eliminate essentially all of those willing to make a deal, make peace, the only path remaining must be perpetual chaos.
    At some juncture, the worm will turn, and it will be the ISI’s turn to explode.
    As the ISAF scales back, its influence over Kabul will drop away.
    When Karzai leaves office, his replacement may well drastically change priorities — towards revenge.
    Tit for tat would seem to be destiny.

  • David says:

    13 people with a single blast? That is a lot of explosive and/or a tightly packed space.
    The security situation over there seems to be a complete mess. How do these random people get so close to important figures? I find it hard to believe that there was not a single, “legitimate” police officer there who did not think, “Who is this random person milling about?”

  • blert says:

    I can’t speak to every confab…
    But, having read of so many attacks one theme stands out: they target ‘get togethers’ where Afghans are meeting up for the first time. (As in the next generation of adults is being brought into the upper ranks of the tribes.)
    In all other settings, the opfor has to settle for kinetic suicide operations — driving a VBIED into a VIP convoy.
    The larger puzzle is when, not if, the Afghans retaliate by going after Pakistanis.
    As the fanatics have shown, the ISI crew is even more vulnerable than most.

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