“Pieces of flesh were plastered on the wall. There were children and women crying for help,” said one civil society activist who spoke with Reuters just after the suicide attack.
A Taliban spokesman claimed the group was responsible for the attack, and said the play was targeted because it was being performed “to insult Islamic values and spread propaganda about our jihad operations, especially on suicide attacks.”
Sadly, for too long it has been relatively easy for citizens of the United States and Europe to indulge in the “otherization” of this particular brand of extremist horror. Yes, such attacks are awful and deserved condemnation, but they were, until the tragic events of this week in Paris, other people’s hells. They generally occurred in far-flung places and were committed against faraway people: schoolgoers in Peshawar and theatergoers in Kabul.
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