Taliban’s Governor For Balkh Meets Families of Suicide Bombers

Yousuf Wafa, Taliban’s governor in Balkh province, met relatives of some of the group’s suicide attackers. Wafa's press office in a statement said that these people had been responsible for suicide attacks on important targets in Kabul and other provinces.

According to Wafa’s office, members of the families that met with Taliban Balkh governor had waged suicide attacks on Kabul Serena hotel, Balkh police headquarters, US military base in Parwan, Kandahar Airport, Intercontinental hotel and Chahar Bolak district in Bakh province.

During this meeting, the Taliban’s governor in Balkh stressed that the group’s administration has been formed based on sacrifice and for its survival, it has to be preserved by sacrifice.

According to the statement, Wafa articulated to the relatives present there that “it is our responsibility to fulfil the goals of the suicide attackers”.

This Taliban official added that the door of the group’s elders and officials is always open to the kin of the suicide attackers. He also distributed some cash to their families.

During the past 20 years of Taliban’s war with the previous government of Afghanistan and international forces, thousands of civilians, including women and children, have been killed due to the group’s suicide attacks.

On February 21, 2022, Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, Taliban’s minister of promotion of virtues and prevention of vice, said that no group executed more suicide attacks than the Taliban in history.

After seizing power in Afghanistan in 2021, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s minister of interior, for the first time, met and appeased some of the relatives of the suicide attackers of the group at the Intercontinental hotel in Kabul.

Haqqani called the suicide attackers as “champions of Islam and the country”.

During a gathering in Kandahar province, Sirajuddin Haqqani in early 2022 had said that 1,500 individuals are ready for suicide attacks. According to him, these people want to join the “martyrs caravan” with suicide attacks.

Taliban officials have repeatedly consoled relatives of the suicide bombers and called them pillars of their 20 years of jihad. At the moment, Taliban’s interior ministry has a unit of suicide bombers named as the Badri Unit and the group’s ministry of defence also manages Omari and Mansoori units of suicide bombers which were included in the military parade of Taliban for their first anniversary of victory on August 15.