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Intercontinental hotel  Kabul
Local Afghans take in the Intercontinental hotel, Kabul, after it was attacked by the Taliban this week. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
Local Afghans take in the Intercontinental hotel, Kabul, after it was attacked by the Taliban this week. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters

The Kabul hotel attack was destined to happen

This article is more than 12 years old
Afghanistan's culture is too polite and fatalistic to take security seriously – plus Afghans are in denial over the roots of terrorism

It was the first group of security guards at the Intercontinental hotel in Kabul who gave us tips about how to sneak in. "Don't tell them that you just want to hang out in the hotel. Tell them you are here for a meeting."

My friend and I thanked them happily. We had fond childhood memories of the hotel – the scene of a suicide attack earlier this week – and just wanted to enjoy seeing our old haunts.

The little wooden cabin where female visitors underwent body searches was even more relaxed. A TV was running in the corner and the women dressed in traditional clothing took only a cursory look into our bags. There was no proper search.

The women who do body searches in "secure" places in Kabul are often too polite or too embarrassed to conduct a proper search. Looking into my bag, one of them said: "Don't worry sister, I know you only have women's stuff in your bag." Frequently, I found myself asking female security staff to search me properly, to look carefully into my bag, but often they refused out of embarrassment.

Whether young or old, male or female, rich or poor, Afghans are exceedingly polite people and it is this culture of politeness that makes conducting a proper search a rather awkward endeavour. A friendly visitor who speaks the language and greets security guards in a friendly and respectful manner unwittingly culturally disarms the guards, rendering them incapable of conducting their search duty vigorously.

This is one reason why security is lax in Kabul and why attacks such as the one in the Intercontinental can easily take place despite security guards and barricades. Hence, this week's attack did not come as a surprise to many of the hotel's visitors.

A friend told me about her recent experience of visiting the Intercontinental. "My driver told me that the security guard had simply asked him whether he had weapons on him and he told the guard that he had none. He was then allowed to drive up and park the car in the upper section of the parking lot."

From the upper parking lot, the driver had an excellent view of the pool area and the ground level. Had he been a terrorist, he would have had a field day.

Afghans are perhaps just too polite to be good security guards. Social interaction is informal and people can be easily persuaded to compromise and not fulfil their security duty vigorously.

Taxi drivers in Kabul are fully aware of the lax security because it makes their job dangerous. According to Mohammad, a driver, "When police stop your taxi, they only look into the glove compartment. They don't look anywhere else and they only look in the glove compartment because they hope to find and confiscate dope there."

Mohammad calls Kabul "Shahr-e Kharbouza" (melon market), a derogatory phrase that sums up not only the security chaos but also the city's nerve-racking traffic.

Kabul's drivers often have little idea of the name or meaning of the city's historical landmarks. The map of the city stored in their brains is full of terrorist attack locations. "This is where the co-ordinated attacks against Serena and Golbahar Centre took place. Here is where I had to turn back because there was a suicide attack. This place is when I called my company to tell them not to send anyone to this address because there was an attack."

The drivers tell their tales of terror in a low and monotonous voice, which powerfully conveys they have resigned themselves to living in a city that can turn dangerous at any time.

The continuation of security threats has two more equally significant sources. First, there's the widespread belief that terrorism has nothing to do with Afghans but is something that outsiders do to Afghans.

Regarding a recent attack on a hospital that resulted in the killing of numerous patients, a young, trendy Afghan told me: "There's no way the Taliban carried out the attack. Our Taliban would never do such a thing. It was al-Qaida with the help of the US."

The denial that terrorism in Afghanistan is also a local problem that needs a local solution is widespread among all classes of people and might be a reflection of a desperate psychological need to believe in Afghanistan as a good and safe homeland which owes all its problems to foreign interference.

Certainly, to accept that one's compatriots can be a people of such brutal cruelty as to not even spare hospitals is tough and this, in turn, makes denial as a psychological coping mechanism understandable. But the downside of denial is that attacks keep happening again and again.

The third factor that allows terrorism to go on is fatalism. When discussing ways to reduce the threat of terrorism, one often encounters a shrug followed by: "Well, if it's your destiny to die, you end up dying. It's not up to you."

To people who are not culturally part of Afghanistan, this fatalistic mindset is seriously disconcerting. But Afghans believe in destiny and that's why they interpret death in suicide attacks as something that is predetermined for the victims rather than a political act of intimidation.

Such belief means that guesthouse and hotel managers neglect to double-check escape routes or make adequate security preparations. "We have an escape door," a guesthouse manager told me, but when I tried to open the door, it was impossible to unlock it, let alone open it. In a less fatalistic society, the door would have been checked every day but not so in Afghanistan.

When I tried to explain to a friend that believing in fate was not a solution to security threats because those who planned attacks were not God but human beings, who plotted them carefully and deliberately, he laughed, and said: "You know what's the only solution for this place? We should all be put into a spaceship and sent into space so that the international community can finally sort this place out in our absence."

This jokingly delivered "solution" was a rare example of Afghan self-criticism. But even though it was delivered laughingly, the bitterness lurking behind the hilarity was hard to miss.

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