[A note to readers: BB’s open thread is taking a short break while he recalibrates to high-signal posting]
Pakistan Strikes a Hospital in Kabul.
Late on Monday night, the 28th night of Ramadan, ย a missile struck the Omid (“Hope”) Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul. It is a 2,000-bed facility built in a former NATO camp, housing thousands of young Afghans receiving treatment for drug dependency. Witnesses said they heard three explosions just as patients were completing evening prayers. Two bombs struck patient rooms directly. “The whole place caught fire. It was like doomsday,” one survivor told Reuters. Al Jazeera
Taliban authorities say 408 were killed and 265 injured; figures that remain unverified by any independent party, though the physical destruction of the hospital and the ongoing rescue operation are not in dispute. Rescuers were still pulling bodies from rubble by flashlight through the night. The UN human rights expert for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was “dismayed” and urged all parties to “respect international law, including the protection of civilians and civilian objects such as hospitals.” ABC News
Pakistan insists its strikes “precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure” in Kabul and Nangarhar, with targeting “carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage.” CP24
One witness at the scene noted military units were positioned around the hospital perimeter; which may explain the targeting logic, if not excuse it. No secondary explosions consistent with an arms depot were filmed.
The pattern matters as much as the incident.
This conflict, the most severe between the two neighbours in years, began in late February when Afghanistan launched cross-border attacks in response to Pakistani airstrikes that Kabul said killed civilians. A Qatar-brokered ceasefire was shattered.
Pakistan has since declared itself in open war with Afghanistan. NPR
The structural parallel with Gaza is not rhetorical; it is operational. One side has an air force and the other does not. One side can strike a capital city’s hospitals; the other cannot reach Islamabad. When a militarily superior power wages war in dense civilian terrain, whatever the provocation, the asymmetry of suffering becomes the story, regardless of who started it. Pakistan’s stated casus belli, TTP cross-border attacks facilitated by the Taliban, is real. But the civilian body count accumulating in Kabul is also real, and the two facts sit in the same moral universe.
There is a principle here that should not require repetition but apparently does: hospitals are protected under international humanitarian law not because the patients inside are innocent of politics, but because the sanctity of medical care is a floor beneath which no military logic is permitted to descend. Drug addicts in a rehab ward on the 28th night of Ramadan are not combatants. Bombing them, intentionally or through reckless proximity, is not a precision strike. It is a massacre.
China’s special envoy has been shuttling between Kabul and Islamabad urging a ceasefire. CBS News
He has nothing to show for it. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are both present in the region and actively trying to resurface. NPR
A full Pakistan-Afghanistan war is the vacuum they have been waiting for. Islamabad’s generals may believe they are winning. History suggests otherwise.
Pakistanis making fun of Palestinians.
how is SM trash relevant. Lets not resort to elevating such nonsense.
Meanwhile, Ali Wazir has been reportedly disappeared, once again.
The portents are not looking good for Pakistan, and its to a degree, understandable why the ‘open war’ against Afghanistan is being used to try and rally support.
There is one fundamental difference between Afghanistan and Palestine. Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem are internationally considered Occupied Palestinian Territory. Afghanistan is a sovereign nation.
Gaza has been compared to an open air prison (this is quite mild language) for years. The same cannot be said for Afghanistan.
I really hope that Pakistan did not intentionally strike a hospital. If it did, I am not going to defend it. For what it’s worth, our information ministry says such claims are baseless.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1983000/information-ministry-rubbishes-afghan-talibans-claims-of-hospital-being-hit-in-kabul
On the larger issue: All Afghanistan has to do is stop allowing the TTP to plan anti-Pakistan activity. If they choose not to do so, Pakistan is fully within its rights to take defensive action. The safety and security of Pakistani citizens is paramount. Afghanistan should know better than to antagonize a much more militarily powerful state.
This was the same logic that operated during “Operation Sindoor” no?