Car bombings in Afghanistan’s flash point Helmand province are sadly ordinary events, but one particularly devestating blast that took place recently has had surprising consequences.
In Lashkar Gah, the administrative capital of Helmand, which is known as a Taliban group political heartland and a centre of opium production, a car bomb went off at a wrestling match, killing 14 people and wounding dozens.
One day after the March 23 blast, hundreds of Helmand residents began a sit-in camp, demanding a two-day cease-fire between the Taliban group and the Afghan government, with around 30 activists going on hunger strike.
Both the government and the Taliban group rejected the two-day ceasefire demand.
In an interview given to the New York Times, one striker, Qais Hashimi, blasted both the Taliban and the Afghan government as “foreign puppets”, before adding:
”Our blood is finished, our tears have dried. We will not say another word. We will not eat.”
Six hunger strikers were hospitalized during the action.
Eventually members of the province’s Ulema Council (religious scholars council) intervened and pushed the strikers to end the hunger strike. The council, however, promised to work jointly with the protesters to lobby for peace.
Afghan women join the sit-in
Women, who are rarely visible outside homes in the conservative province, also launched their own sit-in camps in a defiant show of anti-war solidarity that comes as the Taliban stall on proposed peace talks.
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