By Dawn Lloyd
Editor’s Note: Dawn Lloyd is a guest columnist that spends most of the year in Kabul, Afghanistan. Throughout the term, she’ll be sharing her experiences living in Kabul with Ethos. Any opinions she expresses are solely hers and are not necessarily held by the editorial staff.
Her other entries can be found here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7
The January 21 attack on the traffic police headquarters was close enough to rattle our windows and put us on lock down all day, but not close enough to leave dust from the building shaking, as sometimes happens. The housemates on the opposite side of our nine-bedroom guesthouse could hear the gunfire, but from my side, all I could hear were the usual incessant car horns. A mile from the explosion, while the military was trying to capture the two remaining suicide bombers, the rest of life was unaffected.
Normally when there’s a nearby attack, our head of security calls or text messages each of the “security wardens” (the person whose job it is to confirm the location of all the housemates, and to inform them of any security measures). The challenge of passing on this information is that typically, after an attack, everyone starts making phone calls, overtaxing the mobile phone networks and making phone communication difficult. Unfortunately, three decades of war have left Afghanistan with no landline network, so the country is limited to mobile phones. For this particular attack, the head of security text messaged me as our guesthouse warden. The message stated there was an attack taking place somewhere around the police HQ, and that we were on lock down. In the early stages of an attack, known information is typically limited to that and a general location.
Thus my day began by knocking on all my housemates’ doors, and then a day of sitting at home with everything I needed still at my workplace. Throughout the day we got occasional email, Twitter, and general news media updates. We learned that five people were killed, all attackers. Or maybe it was seven people dead, half attackers and half police. Or possibly it was six people killed (a mix of attackers and police) with one person in critical condition. The reports usually agreed that there were two attackers still holed up inside. It wasn’t until late-afternoon that we got word that the last two attackers had been killed and we were now off lock down. It wasn’t until several hours later that we got confirmed reports that a total of eight people (five attackers and three police) had been killed with several more injured.
I didn’t record a by-the-minute overview of the differing reports as they came in during this attack, but I did a year and a half ago on Sept 20, 2011 when a suicide bomber assassinated former Afghan President and High Peace Council head Burhanuddin Rabbani. I taught class through the reports, but took notes as we got updates from our head of security, security companies my students worked for, or friends/family who were near the attacks. The outline of reports went as follows:
6:25 pm Call from head of security about the bombing. Class started at 6:30, so I told my students to wait while I fulfilled security warden responsibilities and tracked down all my housemates. They were just as busy finding out the news and checking with family members. Two of my students had already bolted out of class anyway because one is a journalist and the other lived next door to the bombing.
6:25 pm The bombing took place at a Spinneys grocery store (a large supermarket by Afghan standardsthat sells western products and is frequented by foreigners.)
6:30 pm The bombing killed some Afghan VIPs, and was also targeting Spinneys (maybe the VIPs were in Spinneys?)
6:35 pm The bombing had nothing to do with Spinneys, but was at Rabbani’s house (which is near Spinneys).
6:40 pm The bombings had now started city-wide with multiple other attacks around the city. (This was a week after the Sept 13 city-wide bombings had shaken Kabul, so everyone was nervous.) At about the same time, the news came out that Rabbani had been killed.
6:45 pm The entire city was shut down and all roads were closed. Five other top High Peace Council reps were killed. One source said that Rabbani had not been killed after all.
6:50 pm Rabbani really is dead, along with 5 other top ministers/council representatives.
7:00 pm Mr. Stanekzai (Deputy Head of the High Peace Council) was also killed.
7:10 pm Stanekzai not killed (somewhere in here it was confirmed that roads were not shut down).
8:30 pm Stanezkai killed, but only three other VIPs killed.
8:50 pm Stanekzai not killed (for sure, this time), but badly injured.
It wasn’t until late that night that it was finally confirmed that only Rabbani had actually been killed.
By the time the news reports hit the west, the information is relatively polished and confirmed, and typically quite different from the experience of actually waiting to find out what is going on around you.
About the author: Dawn Lloyd is an American who got bored and set out to find adventure. Four continents later, she’s settled in Kabul where she teaches English at the American University of Afghanistan. She is Editor in Chief for The Colored Lens magazine and writes speculative fiction, a list of which can be found on her personal site.
KABUL, Afghanistan–A member of the Camp Eggars Force Protection Team runs to the primary vehicle in an suicide attack on Jan 17. A vehicle born improvised explosive devide (VBIED) exploded near the German Embassy and a US base. The VBIED killed and wounded multi-national personnel and damaged vehicles and nearby […]
