They were hardly the first Taliban attacks in the capital. Still, there was something particularly alarming in their scale and implication about the pair of episodes, just a week apart, that rocked Afghanistan: a hotel siege that killed 22, then a car bomb, loaded into an ambulance, that killed 103.

But the question of why — why target bystanders, and in such numbers — is perhaps best answered not by peering into the minds of the attackers but by examining the structure of a war that increasingly pulls its participants toward the senseless.

Whether the week’s events will translate into a long-term gain for the Taliban or serve only as a terrible but temporary show of force, the attacks embody the trends toward violence and disintegration that appear to be only worsening in Afghanistan.

A War Engineered for Chaos

The war’s participants embarked on what they thought was a traditional battle for control of Afghanistan’s territory and for the allegiance of its people. But over more than 16 years, without setting out to do so, they have remade it into a war over one issue: whether or not the country can have a central, functioning state.