London and Kabul face the same fight

Attackers in both cities seek to sow division within societies for their own gain

Protesters throw stones toward security forces in Kabul. Some 500 people demonstrated for better security in the Afghan capital in the wake of a powerful truck bomb attack. Massoud Hossaini / AP Photo

‘We must not let ourselves fall into the trap that the enemies have spread to our country.” Those words, spoken by Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani after a suicide bomb attack in Kabul on Saturday, could easily have been spoken by Britain’s prime minister after a terror attack in London that same day.

In Kabul, suicide bombers struck at a funeral – the dead man was a protester who had been killed the day before at a protest reacting to another attack on the Afghan capital. A few hours after the Kabul attack, on the other side of the globe, three men started a brief rampage through south London’s streets, an eight-minute frenzy that ended when the knife-wielding attackers were shot dead.

The attack in Kabul was the third in four days; the one in Britain the third in three months. In both cases, the attackers had a clear political motive. The government in Kabul is struggling to maintain security in the face of a resurgent Taliban and the Afghan branch of ISIL. The attackers see their chance: toppling the government would be a prize for them, and the way to do that is to split the public.

A similar motivation lies behind the attack in London. This is the second attack in the UK, since a general election was called in April – scheduled for this Thursday. As with events in Paris in the run-up to a presidential election there, the attacks seek to insert themselves into the political process, either by splitting the British public or by pushing them to vote for more extreme candidates. It is not immediately obvious which British candidate the attackers would favour. But in France, the outcome was easier to read: ISIL would prefer an extreme candidate like Marine Le Pen, because the division among French Muslims that she would create would make them easier to recruit.

The ultimate goal is to bring about conditions in which a “terror state” could thrive: either, as in Afghanistan, by potentially creating a state to replace the ungoverned spaces in Iraq and Syria where ISIL can currently gather; or, as in Britain, by making conditions so harsh for Muslims in the West that some of them are susceptible to recruitment.

That is what Mr Ghani meant by the “trap” of his enemies. Hate breeds hate, and the terrorists understand public anger to such heinous attacks. The hard part is to see the trap and avoid it. Only time will tell if politicians in Kabul and London can do so.