In an extended interview with Inside Higher Ed, AUAF’s new acting president described a need to make “radical” changes in the university’s security in the wake of the two attacks in time for a planned reopening of the campus in January.

In meeting with families of the victims, “I tell them I pledge that I, the university, the board, we will do everything we can to have the best security in place,” said David Sedney (right), the acting president. “And while we can’t promise complete security, we can promise we are going to have to make bold, new, radical changes to our security posture.”

Sedney, formerly a member of AUAF’s Board of Trustees, stepped into the acting president role about a month after the attack when the former president, Mark A. English, announced his resignation, citing personal and family reasons. An analyst and commentator on national security and foreign policy-related issues, Sedney formerly worked in various high-level positions in the U.S. government, including as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia from 2009-13, and as deputy chief of mission for the U.S. embassy in Kabul in the early 2000s.

Sedney described a need for significant changes in the physical security and “security culture” of the decade-old university in response to changing security conditions in Afghanistan.

The coeducational, American-style university accepted its first group of students in March 2006, about four and a half years after the launch of the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. AUAF has been heavily funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, to the tune of more than $80 million in committed funds. The English-language institution offers undergraduate degrees in business administration, information technology and computer science, political science and public administration, and law — the latter program was created with the help of Stanford University — and a master’s of business administration. It also offers training and customized education programs through its Professional Development Institute in Kabul and at four regional centers.

For the first decade of its existence, Sedney said, the university was perceived as an “island of security” in a “sea of terror.” Though an AUAF political science professor and a student affairs officer were among those killed in a Taliban attack at a Kabul restaurant in 2014, the university campus itself, Sedney pointed out, had not sustained any attack prior to August even as nearby nongovernmental organizations and government buildings did.

Not only that, he said, but the campus in West Kabul, that of an old international school that operated from the 1950s until the 1970s, had been spared the destruction that leveled many of the buildings around it in the conflicts of the successive decades. Sedney recalled visiting in his capacity as deputy chief of mission for the embassy in 2002 and finding, “amid this scene of incredible devastation,” the campus of the old international school to be “untouched …. It not only was untouched, the glass was still in the windows, the desks were still in the classrooms …. There were even some school supplies.”

“The respect for education gave, did give, an immunity from the kind of destruction that was around it,” Sedney said. “So people did see this as an island of security in the midst of a sea of terror. And the evidence based on what was happening around them was that that was the case. So, if you look back at our security situation before those two attacks, you can say there’s a lot to criticize, because we didn’t build this wall, we didn’t have this guard tower, we didn’t have this many protective people, whatever, and those are all true, but at the same time what’s happened is the security situation here in Kabul has changed. Since the withdrawal of the United States troops, security throughout all of Afghanistan has deteriorated.”

Sedney added, “But the Taliban also have made some kind of major, moral decision to attack a university and attack students.”

On the one hand, education is an established militant target. A 2014 report from the Global Coalition to Protect Education From Attack cites United Nations figures estimating that there were more than 1,000 attacks on education in Afghanistan from 2009-12 — including bombings and arson attacks against schools and killings and abductions of staff — with attacks in some cases being motivated by “opposition to the perceived ‘Western’ or ‘un-Islamic’ curriculum, external affiliations of the school or the perceived role of Western forces in rebuilding some schools, the education of girls generally, or any operation of the central government.”

That said, an analysis published last month by the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a nonprofit research organization, observes that school attacks have been confined to rural areas and takes note of the Taliban’s “officially more tolerant position vis-à-vis educational institutions in recent years.” In principle, the article notes, the Taliban considers educational institutions “off-limits” for attacks.

The analysis by Borhan Osman describes the attack on AUAF as “unprecedented in many respects. For the first time, a ‘complex attack’ — often reserved for high-profile and well-guarded targets — hit an educational institution. It also came in the wake of an ideological campaign by circles in the Taliban movement that had demonized the American University Afghanistan as a center of hostile ‘Western’ efforts.”

“The situation has changed,” said Sedney, the acting AUAF president. “So in terms of specifics we’re obviously going to do the physical things, such as we’re going to build higher walls — I’m not going to tell you how high or how thick or anything like that — we’re going to have a much better guard force, much better equipped and much more professional. We are going to have people with more effective ways of countering violent attacks.”

“Even more important than what we do physically is we have to change our security culture,” Sedney said. “We now have to accept the fact that we are regarded as a target by the Taliban” — in the same way, he said, that other NGOs that have sustained attacks in Kabul “have also had to move from being seen as immune from attack as they have been attacked in recent years.”

“So our change has come later — the various NGOs in Kabul have made major changes in their security posture in the last six months as a result of both Taliban attacks and kidnappings — and we are going to do the same and I think we’re going to do more and better.”

A Danger Zone

In the aftermath of the attack on the campus, some have questioned whether AUAF should have done more earlier to respond to the deteriorating security conditions in Kabul.

Sedney said that while there have been regular, general threat warnings for Kabul and West Kabul over the past 15 years, “there have not been any, repeat not any, specific threats against the university that I know of.” He added that having checked with “all available sources,” Afghan and otherwise, “there was no indication of any direct threat to AUAF in advance of the attack. In the period before the attack, we received no warnings from any Afghan or other institution about a possible attack.”

But a U.S. Department of State travel warning for Afghanistan published June 22, as well as a more recent warning updated Oct. 5, mentions the general risk of attacks against a long list of possible targets including “educational centers.” Numerous security messages sent by the U.S. embassy in Kabul in 2015 and 2016 reference risks to educational centers with “potential American connections” while one, from February 2015, specifically references the “American University” as an example of the type of educational center at risk of attack.

“We’re not very satisfied with how the university conducted itself,” said Barry Salaam, a journalist and civil society activist whose nephew was killed in the attack. “There are a lot of signs that the university management mishandled the whole situation, especially not taking seriously the threats that were there for a long time.”

Salaam said the kidnapping of the two faculty members was “a big warning …. That was a bad incident but in a way it should have alerted them to something more dangerous, which it didn’t. They were asleep. They didn’t realize what was going on around them.”

Mohammad Isaqzadeh, a former chair of AUAF’s political science department, sent an Aug. 29 email to former president English, cc’d to many faculty and board members, accusing the university of failing to protect its students and faculty. In that email, Isaqzadeh — who describes AUAF as “the only oasis of hope in that land of disappointment” — faults the university’s leadership for not having taken security more seriously.

“Unfortunately, the AUAF leadership simply ignored the warnings and requests by the faculty and local staff to fill in the security gaps,” Isaqzadeh wrote. ”I personally had warned about the fragile wall that was toppled down easily by the insurgent attacks and asked the university to reinforce it with concrete walls. Many faculty members and I also opposed holding classes or events when there were reports of serious attacks against the university. Such efforts, however, were simply ignored by the AUAF leadership. The decision to resume the classes for the fall semester without taking extra security measures just one month after two AUAF instructors were kidnapped seemed imprudent.”

(Incidentally, Isaqzadeh’s email also takes issue with a ban English had imposed on staff talking to the press. He wrote, “As an American academic institution, AUAF is supposed to be the champion of freedom of speech and expression in that nascent democracy. One wonders what are the motives behind this move and what is to be hidden from the public.”)

Isaqzadeh was one of a number of current or former professors who raised concerns about AUAF’s security in conversations with Inside Higher Ed. In an interview Isaqzadeh, who taught at the university from January 2011 to May 2015, said he left because he felt unsafe. He cited the messages from the U.S. embassy in Kabul pointing, if indirectly, to possible attacks on the university during his last year there.

“There were a lot of concerns among faculty and staff about security threats,” said Isaqzadeh. “But the university leadership unfortunately failed to take constructive measures in order to increase the security or sometimes I thought they were taking unnecessary risk. For instance there were rumors that the university was under threat in the next, let’s say, for instance, one week and then the university would just continue holding classes without taking additional security measures.”

English, the president from January 2015 through late September 2016, when he resigned, disputed Isaqzadeh’s account in answers to emailed questions. “Although it is policy not to discuss the details of security, the security for the entire campus and community was always a top priority for me,” he said. “Because of the need not to discuss security details, not everyone on campus understood the reasons for every security decision while there is ongoing activity to fill all the security gaps. Therefore, some may have come to the wrong conclusions.”

English said, “The university is always in contact with the regional security officer at the U.S. Embassy as well as other intelligence sources for all potential threat warnings and has ceased classes and closed the university on several occasions based on these warnings. On the night of the attack there was no such warning from these sources.”

English’s previous position before coming to AUAF was as superintendent of a K-12 school in Saudi Arabia. He had a controversial tenure at the university, which included a faculty-led campaign for a vote of no confidence last fall.

Via email English listed multiple steps to improve security taken by the university after the kidnapping, which occurred on Darulaman Road, the street fronting the university. These steps include being granted controlled access to the slip road in front of the university — always, he said, “a top priority for me so that we could monitor and control the vehicular traffic adjacent to the university” — and the switch to using armored vehicles and armed guards to transport staff and faculty. Previously the standard procedure involved unarmored vehicles with unarmed escorts.

“I hope your article will focus on what all of us have tried to do to foster a safe and secure educational environment in a very demanding environment,” said English.

Sedney stressed that the university had “taken strong security measures over the years” and said that before the attack “security measures at AUAF were much, much stronger that at any other university in Afghanistan.”

​Cecil Lui, an associate professor of finance who was injured in the attack, said that before the kidnapping he had felt relatively well protected on the campus. “It’s not very safe because after all it’s Afghanistan, but I had quite a lot of confidence in our security team,” he said. “I saw security guards everywhere on campus. I didn’t know they failed so easily and so fast.”

Lui was lecturing on the second floor of a classroom building known as the Bayat Building when the attack began. He recalled hiding with about 30 students in a classroom, waiting to be rescued, but the insurgents entered the building instead. He said he was hit in the neck, ear, kidney and arm by shrapnel and injured his left arm — breaking and dislocating his wrist and dislocating his elbow — jumping out of the building from the second floor. He was hospitalized in Turkey for more than two weeks and recently underwent another surgery on his wrist after his return to his home base of Hong Kong. Some of his students in that class were also wounded. One, whom he identified by her first name, Jamila, died. (Short biographies of Jamila and some of the other victims of the attack can be found on the Friends of the AUAF website here.)

Lui now uses the word “incompetency” to characterize the university’s security. “A team of security staff shouldn’t be outnumbered by two insurgents,” he said.

Focus on the Future

Investigations into the Aug. 24 attack are planned or ongoing. Sedney wrote in an Oct. 1 email to students, faculty, staff and alumni that the university would conduct its own investigation into the attack in addition to the official one being conducted by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security. He pledged that the university’s investigation “will be professional and thorough and will be advised by a committee comprising representatives of families, students, faculty and staff. As the investigation proceeds we will work to pass on to the university community the results, particularly as they apply to improving our security posture.”