Thoughts on the Kabul suicide attack

Immediate thoughts are that the target (the Indian embassy) makes it almost too obvious to link it to Pakistan (whether government, ISI/military or other).  Aside from this, I would imagine there is the slight possibility (reports are still a bit imprecise) that the Indian embassy was not the target.  It will be very easy - certainly for the Afghan government - to point the finger at Pakistan, but it perhaps worth observing that "effective" suicide attacks in Afghanistan (crudely put, I mean in terms of multiple casualties), are normally in the arena of Al Qa'ida.  In fact I remember one academic paper from last year assessing the Taliban's suicide attacks to be globally the least effective in terms of "body count".

By past history, conclusive evidence of who the backers and organisers of this attack were will almost certainly not be forthcoming - there must be real doubts about the ability of the Afghan security institutions to cordon an incident area and conduct an effective search for evidence, even with the assistance of ISAF.   However, this probably will not stop the Afghan government making sweeping and politically damaging allegations against the Pakistani government.  Afghan-Pakistani relations always seem to be at an "all time low" and this incident will of course make things worse.

Interestingly, the Taliban appear to have denied any link to this attack.  They do tend to pick and choose the suicide attacks they want to be associated with - normally dependent on the number of civilian casualties inflicted.   But I still have the feeling that this is perhaps too effective for the Taliban and a little off the beaten track for them in terms of choice of target.