Taliban warns of restaurant attacks
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - January 15, 2008 The country's intelligence chief linked Monday's deadly attack
on the Serena Hotel - a well-guarded, high-profile property in
Kabul frequented by Westerners - to a Pakistani militant. Afghan
officials arrested four people, and said they included one of the
three attackers, who was disguised in a police uniform for the
assault.
The death toll in the bombing and shooting attack on the hotel
rose to eight. An American, a Norwegian journalist and a Filipina
who died of her wounds Tuesday were among those killed.
"We will target all these restaurants in Kabul where foreigners
are eating," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The
Associated Press by telephone. "We have jihadists in Kabul right
now and soon we will carry out more attacks against military
personnel and foreigners."
Taliban spokesmen often boast that militants plan to step up
attacks. Suicide bombings have increased in the last two years, and
the hotel attack was the first against a facility favored by
Westerners.
Security companies that protect international workers in
Afghanistan restricted Westerners' movements Tuesday, placing
restaurants and stores frequented by foreigners off-limits for
some.
Kabul has about a half dozen restaurants popular with
Westerners. The establishments - run by ex-pats with themed menus
such as French or Mexican - do not allow Afghans entry because they
serve alcohol, which is illegal for Muslims here. The restaurants
sit behind nondescript walls and do little advertising, relying on
word-of-mouth to bring in customers.
Some Westerners said they would continue to eat out. Christoph
Klawitter, the head of a German logistics company, said he dined
out two to three times a week, including at the Serena, before the
attack.
"I will still go out but not as often as before, maybe, and the
venue now is more important," he said. "The Serena was pretty
secure, and even there they got in. So I don't know. The more
security, the more likely it is I might go there."
The Taliban have targeted aid workers and civilian contractors
with kidnappings and killings. But the Islamic militants have
typically focused attacks on Western and Afghan officials or
security personnel, not civilians.
If there are more attacks on Western establishments, it will
likely restrict Westerners' freedom of movement even further, and
eventually could force aid agencies from the country, the way
attacks in Iraq did.
"This is a new kind of target for the Taliban," Barney Rubin,
an Afghanistan expert at New York University wrote on his blog.
"Foreigners going to restaurants in Kabul ... sometimes joke that
they feel like targets. Up to now, however, they have not been."
Rubin added: "I imagine it will not be the last" such attack.
The Serena attack was a grim start to 2008 after record violence
last year, possibly showing that militants could be refining their
strategy to undermine the government of President Hamid Karzai and
the Western-backed campaign to stabilize Afghanistan.
Amrullah Saleh, the head of Afghanistan's intelligence service,
said police found a video made by two of the attackers in a home in
Kabul, where they arrested two men. Police also arrested a man they
said was one of the attackers, while a fourth man - believed to
have driven the attackers to the hotel - was arrested in eastern
Afghanistan while trying to flee to Pakistan.
Saleh said three militants stormed the hotel just after 6 p.m.,
hunting down Westerners who hid in the gym. A guard shot and killed
one attacker at the gate to the hotel parking lot, which triggered
his suicide vest.
A second attacker blew himself up near the entrance to the hotel
lobby, and the third attacker made it inside the hotel and shot his
way through the lobby and toward the gym, Saleh said. The third
attacker wore a police uniform and an explosive vest, he said.
More than 30 U.S. soldiers in a half-dozen Humvees rushed to the
scene, and security personnel from the nearby U.S. Embassy ran
through the hotel in search of Americans.
Samina Ahmed, the South Asia project director for the
International Crisis Group, was in her hotel room when the attack
began. She said a hotel employee led her to the basement but there
was little protection until U.S. troops arrived.
The attack "certainly is a demonstration of intent by the
Taliban to make their presence felt, and it also counters in a lot
of ways this growing talk that they're responsible actors and let's
include them in the (peace negotiations) process," said Ahmed.
Saleh said the attack was masterminded by Mullah Abdullah, a
close ally of Pakistani militant leader Siraj Haqqani. Haqqani is
thought to be based in Miran Shah, the main town in Pakistan's
lawless tribal region of North Waziristan and the U.S. military has
a $200,000 bounty out on him. Saleh said he did not known whether
Abdullah is Afghan or Pakistani.
Saleh displayed a picture taken from the hotel's security
cameras showing the gunman disguised in a police uniform inside the
hotel lobby.
"The third person, after killing a number of the guests, maybe
he changed his mind for some reason, he didn't detonate himself,"
Saleh said. "He changed his clothes and later when security forces
searched the premises, he was arrested."
Authorities raided a house in Kabul early Tuesday where the
alleged attackers had spent the night before the attack. Police
found a video showing two of the assailants, identified as Farouq
and Salahuddin, saying they were ready to die.
"I commit this suicide attack for Allah," the attacker named
Farouq said on the video. He was the one believed to have blown
himself up during the attack.
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Associated Press reporters Noor Khan in Kandahar and Amir Shah
and Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul contributed to this report.
