The 2nd blast in Kabul is from CIA base demolition

A few hours after Sunni armed group the Islamic State delivered a suicide bomb attack to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, on Thursday, another blast echoed away. A lot of people feared that it was the second terrorist attack. But the sound was from the exploding of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency building in Afghanistan by the U.S. army in the process of withdrawal. 　

The New York Times reported on Saturday that the U.S. army destroyed the CIA base called ‘Eagle Base’ near the airport, quoting the U.S. insiders. It was to prevent the Taliban from acquiring the country’s classified information and the newest military equipment. 　

The U.S. Department of Defense announced on Thursday that there were two suicide bomb attacks in Kabul, but corrected on the next day that there was only one terrorist attack. But it did not clarify where the second blast came from, which triggered a lot of speculations. Later on, the second blast was found to be the sound from demolishing the CIA base. 　

The base was made by renovating a brick factory and used from the beginning of the Afghan War. The size of the base was small at first, but it trained anti-terrorist units against Afghanistan’s intelligence agency later on. It was used throughout the 20-year war, but local residents rarely knew about the base as it maintained top security. 　

The base was designed to make it impossible for outsiders to infiltrate. A three-meter high wall wraps around the building and thick steel gates opened briefly for cars to come in and closed right away. Cars entered the base had to go through a search at three checkpoints.


Jae-Dong Yu jarrett@donga.com