Terror strike kills Sikh leaders in Afghanistan

The terror attack, which killed leaders of the minority Sikh and Hindu communities in Afghanistan on Sunday, came just two weeks after New Delhi's envoy to Kabul, Vinay Kumar, had a meeting with some of them.

Kumar, who took over as India's ambassador to Afghanistan in April, also visited Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan just days before the town witnessed the suicide attack on the leaders of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus.

New Delhi suspects that “the state and non-state actors” in neighbouring Pakistan might have orchestrated the latest attack on the Hindu and Sikh leaders of Afghanistan — ostensibly to further terrorise the two minority communities as well as to send out a message to India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday called the terror strike an attack on “multicultural fabric” of Afghanistan. He offered all assistance to the President Ashraf Ghani’s government in Kabul.

Nearly 15,000 Sikhs and Hindus now live in India. They left Afghanistan to escape religious persecution by Taliban and other radical elements. Some of the Afghan Sikhs and Hindus living in India are related to the ones slain in Afghanistan on Sunday. They met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Monday.

“We strongly condemn the terror attacks in Afghanistan yesterday. They are an attack on Afghanistan's multicultural fabric,” Modi posted on Twitter.

“My thoughts are with the bereaved families. I pray that the injured recover soon. India stands ready to assist the Afghanistan government in this sad hour,” added the prime minister.

The terror attack at Mukhaberat Square of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan killed altogether 19 people on Sunday. A suicide bomber exploded himself close to the leaders of the minority Afghan Sikh and Hindu communities when they were on their way to meet the Afghan President. Ghani was on a tour to Jalalabad on Sunday and inaugurated a new hospital just hours before the attack.

The deceased included 11 Afghan Sikhs. Awtar Singh Khalsa, a prominent Afghan Sikh politician, was among the slain. He was purportedly planning to contest the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan next October.

“It was indeed an attack on Afghan patriotism, religious freedom, diversity, democracy, Indo-Afghan friendship and shared values,” Shaida Mohammed Abdali, Kabul's envoy to New Delhi, tweeted on Monday.

He stopped just short of blaming Pakistan and underlined that most of the terror attacks in Afghanistan were orchestrated “from across the border” of the country.

Kumar, India's ambassador to Afghanistan, last week visited Jalalabad and met Governor of Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, Hayatullah Hayat.

Pakistan has since long been jittery about India's role in the reconstruction of conflict-torn Afghanistan. The terror outfits based in Pakistan carried out several attacks on India's embassy and consulates in Afghanistan in the past. Indian citizens working in development projects in Afghanistan were also targeted by the terrorists.

Jalalabad itself witnessed several such attacks, with the Consulate General of India in the city being targeted in 2013 and 2016. Both the attacks were carried out either by the outfits based in Pakistan or by the terrorists receiving support from entities in that country.