Taliban bombers attacked a heavily fortified guesthouse used by Westerners in Kabul on Wednesday and announced the start of their annual “spring offensive”, defying calls from visiting US President Barack Obama about ending the war.
Seven people were killed after attackers disguised in burqas detonated a suicide car bomb and clashed with guards at the “Green Village” complex used by the European Union, the United Nations and aid groups.
The Taliban said the assault was a riposte to Mr Obama, who just hours earlier signed a new partnership pact in Kabul to govern Afghan-United States relations after 2014 — a deal the insurgents dismissed as “illegitimate”.
In an election-year address, Mr Obama presented himself as a commander-in-chief capable of ending two long wars, following the US withdrawal from Iraq, and crushing Al Qaeda, and tried to conjure up a new dawn for a US public exhausted by conflict and recession.
“This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end,” Mr Obama said, recalling a decade-long “dark cloud of war” after Osama bin Laden plotted the September 11 attacks in 2001.
“Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon,” said Mr Obama.
Mr Obama flew into Kabul in secret in the dead of night and signed the deal with President Hamid Karzai, cementing 10 years of United States aid for Afghanistan after Nato combat troops leave in 2014. He left after six hours. “We look forward to a future of peace. We’re agreeing to be long-term partners,” Mr Obama said at Mr Karzai’s palace.
The Taliban said Mr Karzai had no right to sign the deal and accused him of “selling” Afghan sovereignty to the Americans.