They came to kill the mothers. That was the conclusion of Frederic Bonnot, head of programs for Medecins Sans Frontieres in Afghanistan, after he walked through the maternity ward of Ataturk Children's Hospital on May 13, 2020 -- the day after three gunmen in police uniforms had entered the ward and opened fire. Walls sprayed with bullets, blood on the floors, sixteen mothers dead in their beds. The attack was not an isolated atrocity. It was the centerpiece of a month in which violence surged across Afghanistan, barely three months after the United States and the Taliban had signed a peace agreement in Qatar that was supposed to end the war.
On February 29, 2020, the United States signed an agreement with the Taliban in Qatar, setting conditions for the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. The deal was meant to reduce violence. It did the opposite. In the 45 days following the agreement -- from March 1 to April 15 -- the Taliban launched more than 4,500 attacks across the country, an increase of over 70 percent compared to the same period the previous year. The Afghan security forces, already stretched thin, absorbed blow after blow. The agreement had established a framework for peace between the U.S. and the Taliban, but it had no mechanism to protect the Afghan people caught in between. May 2020 would expose that gap with devastating clarity.
At 10 AM on May 12, three gunmen wearing police uniforms walked into Ataturk Children's Hospital in Kabul. They passed other wards without stopping and headed directly to the maternity ward, where they began shooting women in their beds. Twenty-four people were killed, including sixteen mothers who were pregnant, giving birth, or holding their newborns. Three mothers were shot in the delivery room alongside their unborn children. A midwife and two small children were also among the dead. More than 80 women, infants, and staff were evacuated from the hospital during the attack, including three foreign nationals. About an hour later and 150 kilometers to the east, a suicide bomber detonated himself at a funeral in Kuz Kunar District, Nangarhar Province. The mourners had gathered for Shaikh Akram, a former police commander who had died of a heart attack the day before. The explosion killed 32 people and injured 133 others. Two attacks in one morning, targeting a maternity ward and a funeral -- spaces where human beings are at their most vulnerable.
Who was responsible? The answer depended on whom you asked, and the disagreement itself became a weapon. The Afghan government blamed the Taliban and ordered the military to resume offensive operations. Vice President Amrullah Saleh said he had evidence the Taliban had plotted the attacks and were in a "celebratory mood" afterward. Acting Interior Minister Masoud Andarabi pointed to cooperation between the Haqqani network and ISIL, calling the hospital attack a war crime. The United States contradicted Afghan officials, attributing the May 12 attacks to ISIL-Khorasan Province rather than the Taliban. Afghan officials rejected that assessment. The Taliban denied involvement in the hospital attack but openly claimed credit for retaliatory strikes in the days that followed, framing them as revenge for being falsely accused. The UN Security Council condemned the attacks during Ramadan. Deborah Lyons, head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, asked the question that hung over the entire month: "Who attacks newborn babies and new mothers? Who does this?"
The killing did not stop on May 12. On May 14, a suicide truck bomber struck near a court in Gardez, killing five civilians and injuring 29. On May 17, the Taliban attacked a checkpoint near the Mes Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, killing eight security guards. The next day, a suicide Humvee bomber killed nine intelligence personnel at a National Directorate of Security unit in Ghazni. In Jaghatu District that same day, insurgents killed two police officers and three civilians on a road and set their bodies on fire. On May 19, the Taliban attempted to capture Kunduz itself, attacking government posts across the city before being repelled. That evening, gunmen opened fire in a mosque in Charikar during the Ramadan evening prayer, killing eleven worshippers who had just broken their fast. By the time a three-day Eid ceasefire began on May 24, the month had claimed hundreds of lives -- soldiers, police, intelligence officers, civilians, mothers, babies, worshippers, journalists. The ceasefire held for three days. On the night of May 27, the Taliban attacked a checkpoint in Parwan Province, killing five troops. The war resumed as though it had never paused.
A bus carrying employees of the Khurshid TV news station was bombed in Kabul on May 30, killing reporter Mir Wahed Shah and technician Shafiq Amiri. ISIL claimed responsibility, calling the station "loyal to the Afghan apostate government." It was the second deadly attack on Khurshid TV in under a year. The United States, the European Union, and NATO condemned the bombing. By the end of May, the toll had become almost impossible to track: attacks in Balkh, Helmand, Laghman, Nangarhar, Paktia, Ghor, Logar, Ghazni, Zabul, Kunduz, Parwan, Khost, Takhar, Farah, and Kabul itself. The peace agreement signed in February was supposed to chart a path out of two decades of war. Instead, it had opened a space in which violence intensified, accountability dissolved, and the people of Afghanistan -- the ones not seated at any negotiating table -- paid the price in blood.
The attacks of May 2020 were spread across Afghanistan, but the focal point -- Ataturk Children's Hospital -- is located at approximately 34.50N, 69.09E in western Kabul. Nearest airport is Kabul International Airport (OAKB). Elevation roughly 1,800 meters (5,900 feet). From the air, Kabul fills a broad valley ringed by arid mountains. The hospital sits in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, a predominantly Hazara area in the city's west.