Afghanistan’s deputy intelligence minister bragged on national television about his role in a 2018 suicide bombing in Kabul that killed more than 100 people.
During an appearance on TOLONews on January 28, Taj Mir Jawad claimed credit for leading the attack, along with other attacks, including car and suicide bombings.
The 2018 attack involved an ambulance packed with explosives traveling to an intersection in Kabul, where it detonated and killed more than 100 civilians, including women and children.
Two US intelligence officials, who wish to remain anonymous, told the Long War Journal that Taj Mir Jawad calling himself Jawad Sargar during his time as a Taliban commander who helped lead the Kabul Strike Network along with the well-known jihadist Daud, or Dawood.
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Tajuden Soroush, a senior international correspondent for Iran International, posted a clip of the interview on Twitter.
Suhail Shaheen, head of the Political Bureau in Doha, refuted Jawad’s claim, telling Fox News Digital that “killing civilians has never been the policy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). We refute it.”
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“The IEA spokesman had denied carrying out the 2018 attack,” stressed Shaheen, who previously served as a spokesman for the Taliban during their insurgency.
Afghan security officials inspect the site of an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, January 27, 2018. At least 40 people were killed and 140 others injured after a suicide car bomb went off near Sadarat Square in central Afghanistan. Kabul.
(Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
The Kabul Strike Network used personnel and resources from the Taliban, Al Qaeda and a number of Islamic movements in Uzbekistan and Turkistan to carry out attacks around the Afghan capital.
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Bill Roggio of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and managing editor of The Long War Journal wrote on Twitter that the group even found support in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which it claims directly funded the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Police take security measures and there are fears of casualties after a huge explosion and gunshots were reported outside the Afghan Foreign Ministry building in the capital Kabul, Afghanistan, on January 11, 2023.
(Bilal Guler/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“The IRGC was funding some of the most spectacular attacks in the heart of Afghanistan against US, NATO and Afghan security forces, as well as civilians,” Roggio wrote.
Jawad took over as deputy intelligence minister shortly after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan following the hasty withdrawal of US troops from the country.
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According to The Long War Journal, he reports to Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who served as the Taliban’s deputy director general for intelligence before the 9/11 attacks. Wasiq now serves as the intelligence director for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
