Within four hours of the attacks on America’s east coast, Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil strode into the faded Kabul Intercontinental hotel to address international media, on hand for the trial of eight foreign-aid workers accused of spreading Christianity. The urbane minister coolly played down the risk of U.S. retaliation. “We don’t foresee any difficulties in this regard,” he said. “There is no argument or no reason for it.”
His confidence may have been misplaced. Shortly after 2:20 a.m. Wednesday, Kabul was rocked by a series of explosions. The blasts around the city went on for almost 10 minutes with a number of tracer shells or missiles streaking across the starlit darkness. Near the airport, a large fire at what appeared to be an ammunition depot, continued to burn out of control well into the early morning.
The U.S. denied responsibility for the explosions. And some said they came from the opposition forces of Ahmad Shah Massood, who may have died in a government-sponsored assassination attempt Sunday. Indeed, a spokesman in the rebel-held northern territory shortly afterward claimed responsibility.
Earlier, at the United Nation’s staff house, officials prepared for the worst. U.S. consular officer David Donahue looked shellshocked, his tie undone and hanging limply from his neck. Based in neighboring Pakistan but in Kabul for the trial, he conveyed the message that Washington advised U.N. staffers not to leave the compound overnight amid safety fears. By 10 p.m., all U.N. staff in Kabul were called in to spend the night behind its sandbagged walls.
About that time the foreign minister breezed out of the hotel, his briefing complete. He had calmly maintained that Taliban restrictions imposed on bin Laden-on movement, communications and orchestrating attacks from Afghan soil-remained unaltered. Were these measures working? “Naturally,” he said. Could he rule out the involvement of bin Laden or other Arabs in Afghanistan in the attacks on America? “Naturally,” he said. When asked about bin Laden’s whereabouts, the minister was more prosaic: “He’s not,” he said smiling, “at the hotel.”
Minutes earlier, the Taliban’s spokesman in Kandahar-home city of the Islamic movement’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar-had gone one better. Abdul Hai Mutmaen said bin Laden couldn’t have behind the attacks as he didn’t “have the capability.” He went as far as to suggest it could have been the job of another government or internal enemies within the U.S.
Foreign minister Muttawakil continued to stick closely to the government’s line. He said that the Taliban condemned terrorism as it always has. “Our policy has been clear from the beginning,” he said, his white silk turban gleaming in the television lights. “We have criticized, and even now we criticize, all forms of terrorism. Terrorism is a terrifying, hateful [thing] and this incident is, from a humanitarian point of view, vast.”
Muttawakil added that the previous attacks in Kenya and Tanzania had never been proven to be the work of bin Laden. “We have tried in the past to assure [the United States] that Osama Bin Laden has not been involved in any kind of activities. We’re ready to give them any kind of assurance they want.” But as to whether the tragedy would harm Afghan-U.S. relations he said bluntly: “There is no relationship.”
