Afghanistan faces growing threat from bombings

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Police in white helmets search thousands of cars every day. Diplomats and Westerners check beneath their vehicles. Shopkeepers and passersby keep wary eyes out for suspicious parked vehicles.

The war against terror went into a defensive mode this month in Afghanistan when two explosions rocked a crowded market on Sept. 5, leaving 30 dead and injuring dozens.

To Afghans already jittery from the assassinations and near-assassinations of politicians comes an increasing threat of being blown up.

"It's really scary. You don't know where the next bomb will come from," said Najib Joseph Shahabi, an Afghan-American who came from Northern California two months ago to run a family appliance business near the market bombing site.

"This place is nuts. If the bullets don't get you, the bombs will," said Shahabi, whose ears buzzed for days after the Sept. 5 blast. He is thinking of returning to far more peaceful Palo Alto, Calif.

Many bombs reported

At least seven explosions have rocked Afghanistan this summer. Afghan intelligence authorities say they have uncovered more than 50 bombs or potential bombs.

The hand-scrawled bomb log of recent days shows the scope of continuing peril: Dynamite was found in faux candles wedged between the cab and body of an oil tanker truck headed to the U.S. military's Bagram Air Base. Two kilos of explosives were discovered in a plastic bag in the bone-dry Kabul River in a downtown shopping area. Up to 10 kilos of explosives detonated in a trash can outside a United Nations guesthouse.

Another bomb was spotted under a tree outside the Hotel Intercontinental, where a seminar on a free press was being held. Nearby, explosives were found in front of a girls high school, and two more bombs were uncovered in another high school near the Presidential Palace.

Senior Afghan intelligence agents have information that militants are planning a blast much larger than the one of Sept. 5, which began first with a small bomb and was followed five minutes later by a huge detonation of explosives packed tightly in a taxi.

"The first bomb goes off, and that brings police and soldiers running into the area, and then the second goes off to get them," said a senior Afghan intelligence official. "We think there is a very big bombing being planned with multiple bombs that could leave many people dead." From the few arrests made, and from continuing investigations, Afghan authorities are sure the bombings are linked to al-Qaida, the Taliban seeking to return to power and renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar denies involvement in the Sept. 5 attack.

Afghan intelligence reports indicate that Western embassies, foreign troops and journalists are likely targets.

A real threat?

Afghan government leaders are also in the militants' aim, agents said. Afghan leader Hamid Karzai survived an assassination attempt in Kandahar a few hours after the Sept. 5 bombings. Authorities believe the market explosion may have been a botched attempt on the life of a government minister who was meeting in a hotel across from the booby-trapped taxi.

While exercising caution, some Western diplomats are nonetheless suspicious of the extensive reports of unexploded bombs and the anticipation of another huge blast.

And the interim Afghan administration may be all too eager to throw a bomb scare into international relations, diplomats say.

Karzai has pressed for months for the expansion of international peacekeeping forces beyond the 4,700 troops patrolling in Kabul. By advertising bombs aplenty, the Karzai administration portrays a state of growing instability that bolsters the Afghan's government's case for the deployment of more foreign soldiers, diplomats say.

So far, Kabul's international peacekeeping mission has seen little to indicate an increase in bomb making. The force's highly modern bomb disposal unit has not been called out since Sept. 5, a spokesman said, and the troops are not on an especially high state of alert.

Still the discovery of an explosive-rigged tanker that was full of jet fuel and headed toward a U.S. base sent a shudder through the international forces.