Afghan crowds protest desecration of holy book
JALALABAD, Afghanistan – Hundreds shouted “Death to America.” Some in the angry crowd burned an effigy of President Bush; others threw stones at a U.S. military convoy.
Police fired on the demonstrators Wednesday, trying to stifle the biggest display of anti-American anger in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the ruling Taliban militia 31/2 years ago. Four people were killed and 71 injured.
The source of their rage? A report in Newsweek that interrogators desecrated Islam’s holy book, the Quran, at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. U.S. officials said they were investigating.
There were no reports of American casualties in the protests, which quickly spread Wednesday to four Afghan provinces.
The violence was centered in Jalalabad, a city 80 miles east of the capital, Kabul.
Mobs smashed car and shop windows and attacked government offices, the Pakistani consulate and the offices of two U.N. agencies. Smoke billowed from the consulate and a U.N. building. More than 50 foreign aid workers were reportedly evacuated.
Many of the 520 inmates in Guantanamo are Pakistanis and Afghans captured after the Sept. 11 attacks. Despite both governments’ support of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, suspicion lingers in the conservative Muslim nations about the American military.
Growing urban unrest could pose another security challenge for the U.S.-backed Afghan government, which is already battling a reinvigorated Taliban insurgency. About 18,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, fighting rebels and searching for Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden.
President Hamid Karzai, who travels to Washington this month for talks with Bush, played down the violence.
“It is not the anti-American sentiment, it is a protest over news of the desecration of the holy Quran,” Karzai told reporters after talks with NATO officials in Brussels, Belgium.
“Afghanistan is now a democratic country, people can come out and protest and demonstrate and express themselves,” Karzai said. “It also shows that Afghanistan’s institutions, the police, the army, are not yet ready to handle protests and demonstrations.”
The brief article in the May 9 edition of Newsweek reported that interrogators at Guantanamo placed Qurans on toilets to rattle suspects, and in at least one case “flushed a holy book down the toilet.”
“This allegation is contrary to our respect for cultural customs and fundamental belief in the freedom of religion,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico said.
The unrest in Jalalabad began Tuesday, when protesters burned an effigy of Bush. It flared again Wednesday, when more than 1,000 university and high school students marched through the city and stoned a convoy of U.S. military vehicles.
The American troops fired into the air to force the crowd back and quickly left the scene, provincial intelligence chief Sardar Shah said.
U.S. military spokeswoman Lt. Cindy Moore said American forces were ordered to their camps but had no information on whether any of them were caught up in the unrest.
Associated Press Television News footage showed Afghan troops firing dangerously low over the heads of fleeing demonstrators.
The Interior Ministry said four people were killed and that the 71 injured included six police officers.