By Dave Anderson:
Time Magazine has a piece that is analytically bizarre on the recent suicide bombing in a Kabul supermarket that is primarily used by Westerners and Afghans who are part of the small technocratic/bureaucratic class that could conceivably govern the nation in a quasi-Western manner:
A suicide bomber blew himself up in a popular grocery close to the British, Canadian and Pakistani missions in Kabul Friday afternoon in an indiscriminate attack that analysts say could spell the beginning of a new trend in the Afghan capital. Unlike most previous attacks, this one fell on the Afghan weekend and was timed to inflict maximum civilian casualties as predominantly Western shoppers browsed through the store on their day off.
Western civilians in Kabul come in only a few flavors; diplomats, contractors or subcontractors who are working on Western funded projects for either military or civil society/economic development/infrastructure projects, or mercenaries. Those Western civilians are a key component of the US COIN strategy as there have been calls for a 'civilian surge' into Afghanistan for half a decade now.
They are the enablers to the US and ISAF militaries. They are also a much softer target than a US infantry platoon in a heavily fortified fixed position or an MRAP convoy. Attacking Western civilians is not an indiscriminate attack; instead it is an attempt to further isolate the ISAF and its civilian enablers from daily life in Kabul and the rest of the country and concentrate costs. The civilians are a weak link and soft target in the US strategy, and I am surprised that they have not been hit more often.
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