The Taliban have taken credit for the Jan. 14 attack against the Serena Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan. While reports on the incident are still somewhat muddled, it appears that the Taliban's claim that they conducted the attack using a suicide bomber and three other militants armed with grenades and small arms is accurate. The Taliban seem to have staged the attack by engaging the hotel's perimeter security forces with small-arms fire in an effort to breach the perimeter and get the suicide bomber inside the hotel, where he could then find a crowd to target with his device — similar to the November 2005 hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan. The difference is that the perimeter security at the Serena was much tighter than the security at the four hotels targeted in Amman, making the Serena, in effect, a hard target. Reports indicate that the hotel had good security, but that some guests were allowed to avoid the Serena's metal detectors with passes. It appears that the attackers opted to use guns and grenades in lieu of such passes. The number of casualties resulting from the attack is unclear — reports range from two guards to at least five Westerners — and it is unclear how many died from the suicide bombing and the gunfire. Jihadists in other countries have used similar tactics — combining small arms with improvised explosive devices — in attacks directed against hard targets. For example, in September 2006, jihadists in Syria conducted an unsuccessful attack against the U.S. Embassy in Damascus. The 1998 coordinated attacks against the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, Kenya, likewise used small arms and grenades against perimeter security personnel in an attempt to allow suicide bombers to maneuver their large truck bombs close to the embassies. These attempts failed, and the bombs detonated at the vehicle barriers rather than in closer proximity to the embassies, preventing many deaths. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula also frequently used small arms to breach the security perimeters of sites that it sought to attack. Whatever the final outcome of the Kabul incident, it is sure to generate a lot of attention; the Serena Hotel is a haven for visiting foreigners, including many journalists. It will help the Taliban in their efforts to exploit the disarray in the U.S./NATO policy on Afghanistan and shape the perception that the situation is deteriorating. This recent attack is in keeping with a trend STRATFOR has been reporting on for many months now: the Taliban's increasing use of suicide bombings. A suicide bomb attack in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan on Nov. 6, in which the Taliban used multiple bombers to strike at a group of Afghan parliamentarians, left more than 60 people dead, including at least five of the politicians. The Baghlan attack was the deadliest suicide bombing in Afghanistan since U.S. military operations began there in 2001. In February 2007, a Taliban suicide bomber detonated outside the U.S. military base at Bagram during a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. STRATFOR anticipates that suicide attacks will continue to increase in Afghanistan, and that Afghan security forces and civilians will continue paying the price for this campaign.