The repeated strikes on the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) trauma hospital in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, in the early hours of 3 October 2015 left many horrified and dumbfounded. It is difficult to understand how and why such an attack was possible, given the initiatives to safeguard the lives of Afghan civilians, because of a long history of deadly airstrikes.
The attack by the US military in Kunduz was just a few days short of the 14th anniversary of the 7 October 2001 airstrike that signalled the start of 'Operation Enduring Freedom', a campaign to drive out the Taliban from power and prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for al-Qaeda operations. The US-led occupation of Afghanistan effectively came to an end in December 2014, when the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – which included troops from NATO and other countries – was disbanded and replaced by a much smaller programme concerned with counter-terror activities and to providing training and other support to Afghan security forces.
Afghans have struggled to survive through the different phases of a long war that began in earnest in December 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded and occupied the country until 1989. Airstrikes during the Soviet era exacted a huge human cost, in terms of deaths, displacement, and devastation of infrastructure. This included the bombing of MSF clinics in areas under the control or influence of the mujahideen who were opposed to the Soviet-backed Kabul authorities.
Such attacks echo in the destruction of the hospital in Kunduz that cut short the lives of 12 MSF staff and ten patients including three children, and injured dozens more. Some 30 staff were listed as 'missing' and feared dead at the time of writing. The MSF were unable to contact with their colleagues as fighting between Taliban and Afghan security forces persists in Kunduz. There were more than 180 patients and staff when the bombs struck the main hospital building, where intensive care facilities and the emergency room were located. The airstrike involved five bombing sorties. Some patients died when they were burned alive in their beds as the hospital was engulfed in flames. The destruction of the hospital and departure of MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, is a huge loss to the people of Kunduz, a city currently on the frontlines of a war that has intensified in recent times. It is also a major blow to almost a million Afghans in neighbouring districts. According to Dr Steve McVicar, a Canadian orthopedic surgeon who has worked with MSF in recent years in Kunduz, up to 100 Afghans, many suffering war wounds as a result of bomb blasts, gunfire or other such incidents, require attention at the outpatients department on a typical day. The hospital conducted 5900 surgeries and over 20,000 consultations last year.