Islamic State suicide attack at Afghan Foreign Ministry kills five when Chinese delegation was supposed to visit

At least five people were killed and around 40 others were wounded in a suicide bomb explosion in Kabul on Wednesday, according to local police and organizations. The incident marks the second major attack in Afghanistan’s capital city this year, and the latest sign that the Taliban administration is struggling to keep its promises to Beijing to maintain stability in the region.

The suicide attack outside the Afghan Foreign Ministry was claimed by the local ISIS branch known as Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K). The blast reportedly happened when a Chinese delegation was supposed to meet the Taliban at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

• “There was supposed to be a Chinese delegation at the foreign ministry today, but we don’t know if they were present at the time of the blast,” Deputy Minister of Information and Culture Muhajer Farahi said.

“It is increasingly clear that the Taliban is struggling to deliver on security in Kabul and beyond,” Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and the author of Sinostan: China’s Inadvertent Empire, told The China Project. “The fact we have seen high-profile strikes now by IS-K on Pakistani, Russian, and Chinese diplomatic presences, as well as the Chinese hotel and numerous Hazara targets and government ministries, shows how weak Taliban capability is to deliver security.”

“It was particularly striking that the attack on the Chinese hotel came a day after the Chinese ambassador visited the authorities to lobby for more security protection of Chinese interests. This highlights how precarious and ineffective Taliban security guarantees are,” he added.

Although IS-K said that the blast killed at least 20 people, “including several ‘diplomatic’ employees,” Ahmadullah Muttaqi, a senior official at the prime minister’s office, said no foreigners were present at the ministry when the suicide bomber struck. However, the Taliban reportedly tends to underplay casualty figures in such incidents.

• “As far as we have learned, there have been no Chinese casualties in this terrorist attack,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wāng Wénbīn 汪文斌 said when asked at a press conference today.
• “We hope Afghanistan will take resolute and effective measures to protect the safety of the people and institutions of China and all other countries in Afghanistan,” he added.

“By downplaying the casualty rate, the Taliban is downplaying the seriousness of the incident,” Pantucci told The China Project. “Similarly, it is always the case that groups like IS-K will overstate casualty numbers. This is exactly what the Taliban used to do when it was locked into conflict with the U.S./NATO and the [former] Republic government.”

IS-K is a sworn enemy of the Taliban, and has been largely responsible for a string of recent attacks targeting foreigners and foreign interests — particularly from China — which have undermined efforts by the Taliban to attract investment from neighboring countries since it seized power last year.

• Khorasan is a historical term for a region that includes present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and surrounding countries, regions where IS-K has been active and has claimed numerous attacks.
• The news comes just one month after IS-K conducted a recent attack on a hotel frequented by Chinese businessmen in Kabul, stoking already-high concerns from Beijing about the safety of Chinese nationals and interests in the region.

The attacks pose a significant risk to Afghanistan’s relationship with neighboring China, one of the few nations willing to engage with the Taliban. No country has formally recognized its administration, including China, but Beijing’s resource and security interests in the country have kept it tethered to the de facto regime.

• Most of the pending agreements between the two sides, such as plans for the lucrative Mes Aynak copper deposit near Kabul, were initially signed under Afghanistan’s previous Republic government.
• But last week, Beijing signed a deal with the Taliban to extract oil from the Amu Darya basin located in the northern part of Afghanistan — the first major agreement between the Taliban and a foreign company.
• Beijing has also displayed rare support for the insurgent leaders through provisions of humanitarian aid.

“There is a deep frustration on both sides about this relationship. From the Taliban perspective, it would like to see investment speeding up. From the Chinese perspective, they recognize the counterparty they are dealing with is clearly unable to deliver on security or much else,” Pantucci told The China Project.

While China has engaged actively with the Taliban, it is far from a show of support: Regional powers and Afghanistan’s neighbors have little choice but to engage with the regime that is in place.

• The Chinese Foreign Ministry advised its citizens in Afghanistan to “leave and evacuate the country as soon as possible,” after the attack on the Chinese-operated hotel in Kabul.
• “China supports its enterprises in investing and starting businesses in Afghanistan when the security situation permits,” according to the official readout of the Tunxi Initiative held in March 2022.

“The worsening security situation will make Chinese entrepreneurs and private firms more wary — and they are a major driver of activity at the moment — while the state owned enterprises will tread carefully and are unlikely to be pressured much by Beijing to move quickly into such uncertain terrain. If attacks continue this cycle of activity will continue and frustration will increasingly build,” Pantucci told The China Project.

“Yet there is little incentive for either side to let things fall apart publicly: The Taliban may be frustrated, but do not have anyone else knocking on the door. And for the Chinese, even worse than having the Taliban in power would be the chaos that could come next instead if it were to fall apart as a government. So both sides are incentivized to keep a positive spin on things,” he added.