[The Epoch Times, December 14, 2022](Comprehensive report by Epoch Times reporter Xu Jian) On Monday (December 12), a hotel where Chinese people live in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, was shot and bombed. The attacker died. However, Beijing tried to downplay the connection between the incident and the CCP. According to commentators, the CCP has been advocating its relationship with the Taliban.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the attackers, members of its affiliate, the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISKP), targeted a hotel owned by “Communist China” where “Chinese businessmen and Communist diplomats were Regulars”.
The Taliban-led Afghan government has not provided official details of the attack, but Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said late on Tuesday that three attackers were killed and no foreigners were killed.
This multi-storey hotel located in the central business district of Shar-e Naw in Kabul, also known as the “Chinese Hotel”, is named after the Chinese businessmen. The hotel has 10 floors. In addition to the guest rooms, it also has a Chinese restaurant and a supermarket.
More than 30 Chinese nationals were in the hotel at the time of the attack, Yu Minghui, head of Kabul’s Chinatown commercial complex and a major Chinese businessman in Afghanistan, told Reuters. “Five of them are in the intensive care unit of the emergency hospital and about 13 to 14 people have minor injuries,” he said, adding that the rest had left the hotel for other locations.
A witness at a restaurant near the hotel told Reuters the raids and arrests took place in the area about an hour before the first explosion was heard.
Security personnel who were in the area at the time of the first blast said initial details showed the attackers managed to book a room in the hotel ahead of the attack and thus managed to get explosives inside ahead of time.
ISIS releases photo of two gunmen named ‘Abu Omar’ and ‘Abu Jabbar’ in its statement(see here)also released a video of the attacker swearing allegiance to the new Islamic State leader, Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.
Why did the CCP downplay the terrorist attacks?
The day before the attack, the Chinese ambassador met with the Afghan deputy foreign minister to discuss security-related issues and seek more questions about the protection of the Chinese embassy.
A day after the attack, the website of the Chinese embassy in Kabul posted nothing about it. Five Chinese nationals were injured, China’s foreign ministry said at a news conference on Tuesday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin called the attack shocking and asked Chinese citizens and institutions to “evacuate” as soon as possible.
On Monday, the CCP’s mouthpiece Xinhua News Agency did not mention that the hotel in Kabul is a hotel where Chinese people often live, nor did it mention whether any Chinese citizens were injured, nor did it mention that the CCP ambassador and the Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan held a meeting on security issues the day before. talks.
The CCP’s official media CCTV also did not mention the connection between the incident and China in its report, but mentioned that the Khorasan province, a branch of the extremist organization Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the hotel attack.
Li Linyi, a current affairs commentator, told The Epoch Times, “The CCP has tried its best to downplay it, mainly because the CCP has been advocating its relationship with the Taliban. Since the United States withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, the CCP has tried to fill the ‘vacuum’ in this region and has warm relations with the Taliban regime. At the same time, they asked the Taliban not to take in armed personnel in Xinjiang. However, this attack, coupled with the fact that the attackers clearly targeted ‘communist diplomats’, made the CCP unable to step down because of what it said before. The authorities could not explain Since the relationship between the CCP and the Taliban regime is so good, and the Taliban is in control of the overall situation, are the Chinese people being violently attacked by Xinjiang people who are still in Afghanistan?”
“These are actually sensitive issues of the CCP, so as long as the matter is not too big, the authorities hope to downplay it.” He said.
This is the first time that the interests of the Chinese people in Afghanistan have been attacked since the Taliban took power last year. The Turkestan Islamic Party seeks to free the Uyghurs from the CCP’s control, and has recruited dozens of Turkestan Islamic Party members with high salaries.
Responsible editor: Lin Yan#