Abdul Rahman Mawen, a civil activist in Jalalabad, blamed the extremists’ declining battlefield fortunes for the attacks on soft targets. “ISIS was fighting against security forces in the first stages, but when they were beaten and suppressed by the security forces, they started attacking women, children, and civilian targets,” he said.
Nothing has proved off limits to the extremists. On Saturday, Islamic State fighters attacked a school for midwives in Jalalabad, killing three employees, although most of the 67 female students escaped unharmed. ISIS claimed responsibility the next day.
In May it attacked during a government and Taliban cease-fire over the Ramadan holiday of Eid al-Fitr, killing 36 civilians at a celebration in Jalalabad.
On May 31, it was a boys’ school in the Khogyani district of Nangarhar Province, where the extremists beheaded three school workers. A day later, they attacked a group of minority Sikhs and Hindus waiting to meet President Ashraf Ghani while he was visiting Jalalabad; 19 were killed, including the country’s only Sikh candidate for Parliament.
Government offices in Jalalabad have been attacked by the Islamic State repeatedly, including the Finance Ministry in May and the Education Department twice in July. On July 10, it attacked civilians lined up waiting to be searched at a government checkpoint, killing eight.
In May, the Islamic State killed eight civilians attending a Jalalabad cricket match; that sport had previously been off limits to attacks. In January, the insurgents stormed the offices of Save the Children in Jalalabad, killing at least five people and forcing the charity to suspend its operations in Afghanistan, where it has been one of the leading relief organizations.
A Nangarhar Provincial Council member, Zabihullah Zamarai, said it had gotten so bad that in many areas of the province, children were afraid to walk to school. “Every government institution in the city has been attacked. What is going on in this city?” he said. “No one is paying any attention to the situation here.”
Source : Nytimes
