A big ‘kinetic event’ happened in Kandahar, Afghanistan, today. The reports seem suspicious to me.

The headlines:

• Reuters: Picnic site blast kills over 80 Afghans
• Associated Press: Suicide bomber kills 80 in Afghanistan
• Agence France-Press: Afghan suicide blast kills 80: governor
• AP: photo of damaged cars
• AP: video of aftermath

At the "picnic site," as Reuters labels it, were some 500 men (no women allowed) who came together to watch and bet on dog-fights some seven miles outside of Kandahar.  Something exploded, 80+ are dead and 100+ wounded. The dead include some local war-lord and militia leader who is friendly with the government and therefore also labeled as ‘commander of an ‘auxiliary police force’. According to the AP video voice-over, all the men attending the event were ‘militia and police’. It is unclear to me if or how many real police men were there.

AFP:

More than 500 people had gathered on Sunday for the dog-fighting competition, said Abdul Karim, a fan of the popular winter pastime which the 1996-2001 Taliban government banned as "un-Islamic".

"Fighting had just started between two dogs. Suddenly I heard a huge explosion next to a police vehicle. Then I saw lots of people dead and wounded," he told AFP.

The governor speaks of a ‘suicide bomber’ and the head of the provincial council, a brother of President Karzai, says it was a suicide bomber who was on foot and mingled with the crowd.

But the damage of the cars in the AP photo and video is quite severe and the number of casualties huge. The event happened in open fields. What person is able to carry in a concealed way the amount of explosives that is needed to have such effects? The eyewitness doesn’t speak of a suicide bomber, so how does the governour knows this?

AP reports that some of the war-lord’s bodyguards did spray and pray into the crowd after the explosion.

Faizullah Qari Gar, a resident of Kandahar who was at the dog fight, said militant commanders’ bodyguards opened fire on the crowd after the bombing.

"In my mind there were no Taliban to attack after the blast but the bodyguards were shooting anyway," he said.

That may explain some of the high casualties numbers. Reuters adds:

Reporters were not allowed to talk to the wounded in hospitals and officials had no comment about the reports of police firing.

We can not be sure what this has been, but I seriously doubt the story of the single "Taliban" suicide bomber. This might have been local gangs fighting over a bet or whatever.

But the officials blame the Taliban and therefore it must have been the Taliban. To confirm the official line, AP mixes in some astonishing backward reasoning:

A Taliban spokesman said he didn’t immediately know if the militants were responsible. The Taliban often claim responsibility immediately after major attacks against police and army forces — often naming the bombers — but shy away from claiming attacks with high civilian casualties.

So the Taliban do claim responsibility for some events but not for others. That might be because they "shy away" from claiming responsibility as the AP scribe writes.

But could that not also simply be because they are not responsible for some of these events? Could the big events with high civilian casualties have some other perpetrators?

Those question will of course not be discussed in western media reports. Instead we get pressed to agree that more western troops are needed in Afghanistan so the local gang boys in Kandahar can enjoy to incite their pit bulls into mauling each other.

The Taliban would forbid such deadly, bloody fights as un-islamic. We certainly can not allow that to happen again.