Noting the deadly attack on a popular Lebanese restaurant in Kabul last week, Mark Milley, the Deputy Commanding General of the United States Forces in Afghanistan predicted an increasing number of similar attacks.
Last Friday, the Taliban launched a suicide attack on La Taverna du Liban in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood of Kabul that left 21 dead, including 13 foreign civilians. The attack made headlines around the world as one of the deadliest attacks on foreign nationals in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.
But Friday's attack was just one of a number of attacks around the country that have gotten 2014 off to an ominous start, the year NATO troops withdraw and President Hamid Karzai's successor is elected.
In a video conference with reporters at the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Milley said that Afghanistan would likely witness further attacks in the coming days, targeting foreign troops, Afghan military, government officials and Afghan and foreign civilians.
Milley said that the attacks, like the one one on La Taverna, were intended to induce fear amongst foreigners and their Afghan supporters just as the international community prepares to drawdown its role in Afghanistan.
The upswing in violence to start of the year, a season in which fighting usually sees a lull before the surge of the spring and summer months, marks a bad omen to many who see 2014 as a litmus test for Afghan security and stability.
The fact the Kabul government has yet to sign a security pact with the U.S., which would ensure a continued military partnership between the two countries after 2014, only adds to anxieties about the path ahead for Afghanistan.
The Afghan Ministry of Interior (MoI) has said that if the international community wants peace and stability in Afghanistan then they must focus on eliminating the roots of the problem in Pakistan.
"If there is a chance for these attacks to be stopped and suicide bombings prevented, the main centers of terrorists and suicide bombers in Pakistan must be eliminated completely," MoI spokesman Sediq Sediqi said. "That is when the people of Afghanistan will live in peace."