LoungeMachine
05-12-2005, 11:03 PM
By CARLOTTA GALL
Published: May 13, 2005
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 12 - Anti-American violence spread to 10 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces and into Pakistan on Thursday as four more protesters died in a third day of demonstrations and clashes with the police.
An Afghan policeman in Logar Province, south of Kabul, took cover as protesters inflamed by a report from Guantánamo Bay threw stones.
Hundreds of students took part in three separate demonstrations here in the capital, where they burned an American flag, and a provincial office of CARE International was ransacked in a continuation of the most widespread protests against the American presence since the fall of the Taliban government more than three years ago.
In the most violent single incident, the police fired on hundreds of tribesmen from Khogiani, a district in eastern Afghanistan, who were trying to march in protest on Jalalabad, the town where four people died and 60 were wounded on Wednesday.
The police blocked the tribesmen, many of whom were armed, 20 miles from the city and had orders to fire into the air to disperse the crowd, said Fazel Muhammad Ibrahimi, the director of health in the province.
The Afghan authorities and Kabul residents said the spate of violence was the fault of outsiders, who they said were seeking to capitalize on student protests stirred up by reports, most recently in the May 9 issue of Newsweek, that Americans had desecrated the Koran during interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Islamic fundamentalist political parties, remnants of the former Taliban government and a renegade anti-American commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, are all possible sources of the violence, said Lutfullah Mashal, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
The American military is still trying to analyze whether the violence is politically driven, instigated by outsiders or a sign of general public frustration with the slow pace of reconstruction in the country, said a spokesman, Col. James Yonts. Students interviewed in Kabul pointed to the presence of American troops in the country as another source of resentment.
Local governors might also be encouraging protests against the central government and its American backers to improve their own standing before parliamentary elections in September, said Jandad Spinghar, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Jalalabad.
Seeking to calm the passions raised by the desecration report, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed regret for the loss of life and promised a full investigation of the allegation against Americans at Guantánamo. "Disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be tolerated by the United States," Ms. Rice said in a surprise statement issued before an appearance at the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Protests erupted throughout the country on Thursday, spreading south from the capital region.
In the town of Chak in Wardak Province, south of Kabul, a high school student was killed and five were wounded when the police opened fire on demonstrators who marched on the provincial capital, said the provincial police chief, Basir Salangi.
"The people claim the police did it, and the police say it was the demonstrators," he said, reflecting the confusion over many of the clashes that broke out. The protesters set fire to the administration building, in anger at the shooting by the police, the official Afghan news agency, Bakhtar, reported, quoting one of the student demonstrators.
In Logar, another province south of Kabul, protesters toppled a mobile telephone tower and destroyed equipment at its base overnight, local officials said. High school students then gathered at their school in the town of Muhammad Agha at 7:30 a.m. Thursday to protest the report from Guantánamo. Protesters broke the windows of a new foreign-financed district administration office that was opened just last Saturday by President Hamid Karzai.
The rioters then attacked the offices of CARE International, the American aid group, and of another aid organization next door, scaling the walls, breaking windows and smashing computers and beating some of the local staff. The crowd returned three times to the compound during the day, Paul Barker, the country director of CARE, said.
Published: May 13, 2005
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 12 - Anti-American violence spread to 10 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces and into Pakistan on Thursday as four more protesters died in a third day of demonstrations and clashes with the police.
An Afghan policeman in Logar Province, south of Kabul, took cover as protesters inflamed by a report from Guantánamo Bay threw stones.
Hundreds of students took part in three separate demonstrations here in the capital, where they burned an American flag, and a provincial office of CARE International was ransacked in a continuation of the most widespread protests against the American presence since the fall of the Taliban government more than three years ago.
In the most violent single incident, the police fired on hundreds of tribesmen from Khogiani, a district in eastern Afghanistan, who were trying to march in protest on Jalalabad, the town where four people died and 60 were wounded on Wednesday.
The police blocked the tribesmen, many of whom were armed, 20 miles from the city and had orders to fire into the air to disperse the crowd, said Fazel Muhammad Ibrahimi, the director of health in the province.
The Afghan authorities and Kabul residents said the spate of violence was the fault of outsiders, who they said were seeking to capitalize on student protests stirred up by reports, most recently in the May 9 issue of Newsweek, that Americans had desecrated the Koran during interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Islamic fundamentalist political parties, remnants of the former Taliban government and a renegade anti-American commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, are all possible sources of the violence, said Lutfullah Mashal, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
The American military is still trying to analyze whether the violence is politically driven, instigated by outsiders or a sign of general public frustration with the slow pace of reconstruction in the country, said a spokesman, Col. James Yonts. Students interviewed in Kabul pointed to the presence of American troops in the country as another source of resentment.
Local governors might also be encouraging protests against the central government and its American backers to improve their own standing before parliamentary elections in September, said Jandad Spinghar, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Jalalabad.
Seeking to calm the passions raised by the desecration report, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed regret for the loss of life and promised a full investigation of the allegation against Americans at Guantánamo. "Disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be tolerated by the United States," Ms. Rice said in a surprise statement issued before an appearance at the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Protests erupted throughout the country on Thursday, spreading south from the capital region.
In the town of Chak in Wardak Province, south of Kabul, a high school student was killed and five were wounded when the police opened fire on demonstrators who marched on the provincial capital, said the provincial police chief, Basir Salangi.
"The people claim the police did it, and the police say it was the demonstrators," he said, reflecting the confusion over many of the clashes that broke out. The protesters set fire to the administration building, in anger at the shooting by the police, the official Afghan news agency, Bakhtar, reported, quoting one of the student demonstrators.
In Logar, another province south of Kabul, protesters toppled a mobile telephone tower and destroyed equipment at its base overnight, local officials said. High school students then gathered at their school in the town of Muhammad Agha at 7:30 a.m. Thursday to protest the report from Guantánamo. Protesters broke the windows of a new foreign-financed district administration office that was opened just last Saturday by President Hamid Karzai.
The rioters then attacked the offices of CARE International, the American aid group, and of another aid organization next door, scaling the walls, breaking windows and smashing computers and beating some of the local staff. The crowd returned three times to the compound during the day, Paul Barker, the country director of CARE, said.