Taliban attack on expats in Kabul cafe is likely to accelerate disengagement

Suicide attacks are a regular agony in Kabul but last Friday's restaurant bombing was a rare strike at the city's close-knit community of foreign civilians – and it risks chilling international support for the struggling country.

The Taliban squad chose a Lebanese cafe that had been open for years, was popular with Afghans and foreigners, and with its armed guards and steel doors met the security requirements for groups such as the United Nations left bruised by previous attacks. Details of the 21 killed trickled out over the weekend; the carnage spared few of the eclectic groups of expats who have gathered in Kabul over the last decade.

The dead included an academic and commentator, finance specialists, an old Afghan hand trying to broker peace talks with insurgents for the UN, a security guard, a children's health specialist, and the restaurateur, who was reportedly gunned down trying to protect his clients. Two Britons were injured. The only foreigners absent from the grim list were soldiers.

"This was an attack on foreign civilians targeted merely for being foreign – a rare occasion in this Afghan war," the Afghanistan Analysts Network said in a report on the killings. "It is unlikely that an attack on a restaurant will prompt international missions to stop their work, but the psychological effect is not to be underestimated.

"Pressure from home countries is likely to rise, demanding more restrictions or the withdrawal of personnel. But more security regulations and less personnel means even more compromises on the quality of aid and policymaking."

Already organisations are rethinking their security policies, said aid workers in Kabul. The effects are unlikely to be dramatic but the cumulative impact of a slow reduction in travel and meeting places will almost certainly be damaging. Although foreign organisations can be heavy-handed, short-sighted or plain ignorant and in some cases complicit in wasteful spending of millions of dollars of aid, they are also critical in keeping an underfunded and understaffed government afloat and trying to meet the most pressing food and health needs of one of the world's most vulnerable populations. Foreign interest in Afghanistan's plight was already waning as the combat missions wind down and soldiers head home. If foreign civilians are also forced to cut back their work and profile, it will probably mean another step towards disengagement from Kabul. At a time when the US is mulling whether or not to leave any troops in Afghanistan – and few analysts think funds will flow if the soldiers go – that may be exactly what the Taliban are seeking.

Insurgent attacks in recent years had focused largely on embassies and military bases, where security measures have increased over the last decade. They are now surrounded by formidable blast walls and defensive machine-gun nests, with streets shut off to through traffic.

This has meant even relatively sophisticated attacks like a recent one in which official cars, counterfeit passes and Nato uniforms took attackers to the doorstep of the CIA office in Kabul, could end with few casualties and little impact in the world's media.

In contrast Friday's attack was splashed across front pages around the world.

It also already appears to be affecting rules of foreign organisations in Afghanistan, just as a deadly 2009 attack on a UN guesthouse caused sweeping changes to the way they and other international organisations worked. On Sunday a few dozen activists gathered in central Kabul and marched to the site of the bombing to lay flowers for the dead, carrying signs saying: "We will win, terrorism will lose." It was a rare public act of grieving in a city that has endured decades of violence – and perhaps a sign of how much some feel is at stake.