They went room to room looking for Indians

A day after the terror attacks in  the heart of Kabul, it is apparent that the Taliban’s aim was to get at Indian nationals living in the Noor guest house. The attackers obviously knew that ten Indians were staying here and went from  room to room shooting at their hapless victims.

The worry is that Indians are now becoming the main targets for the Taliban in Afghanistan. More such attacks will follow even as Pakistan is loudly protesting to the US and NATO forces that India needs to roll back its presence in Afghanistan. So far New Delhi has not pointed a finger at Pakistan, though some in the Afghan establishment have talked about the ISI’s involvement.

The silver lining is that six and not nine Indians were killed. It was the brave effort of Major Jyotin Singh, an army doctor who tried to disarm one of the terrorists, that helped save many of his collegues. The suicide bomber on being apprehended blew himself up. The impact of the explosion unfortunetly also killed the good doctor.

Two army men were killed in the Noor guest house. A number of Indian women were saved thanks to the Major who physically stopped one of the terrorists.

Three gunmen first attacked the Noor guest house and then went over to the Park hotel where a number of Indians were staying. Four Indians lost their lives at the Park. An Italian diplomat and a French filmmaker as well as a number of local staff working in the hotel were among those killed.    

The dead are Major Deepak Yadav of the army education corp, who was in Kabul to teach English to young Afghans; Major Jyotin Singh of the army medical corps, working at the Indira Gandhi children’s hospital; Nitin Chibber, a staff member of the consul general of India at Kandahar; Roshan Lal, an ITBP constable and security guard at the consulate in Herat; Bola Ram, deputy general manager of the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd, who was visiting Kabul to hand over the Chimtala power station built with Indian help to the Afhgans; and Nawab Khan, a  tabla player who had gone to Afghanistan as part of an ICCR sponsored group and performed in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat and was on his way back to Delhi.

A special plane has gone from New Delhi to fetch the dead. The flight’s return has been delayed due to bad weather in Kabul.
India which had sided with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban has always been a target of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, goaded on also by a section of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence. But despite the best efforts of the Taliban to frighten Indian nationals out of Afghanistan, New Delhi has stayed the course. Indians are also working for private foreign companies in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai spoke to Prime Minsiter Manmohan Singh by telephone on Saturday, offering his condolences and promising a full investigation into the attack.

The Indian embassy in Kabul was attacked in July 2008, where 50 people including an Indian diplomat were killed. New Delhi and Kabul had charged the ISI of using the Haqqani network of the Taliban, known to be close to Pakistan, for the attack. The next year, a car laden with explosives blew up on the boundary wall of the embassy, but no Indian was killed.

Though India’s role in Afghanistan is confined to helping in reconstruction, the work India is doing has made it popular with the civilians. Indians are building hospitals, schools, roads, a new  Parliament house  and fixing transmission lines  and small power plants across the country. Unlike the US and NATO forces, which are engaged in taking on the Al Qaeda and Taliban, New Delhi is concentrating on projects which directly touch the lives of people.

New Delhi’s popularity in Pakistan’s backyard is making Islamabad nervous. Pakistan’s aim is to get India out of Afghanistan and make sure its consulates in Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazer-e-sharif and Herat are shut down.