KABUL—Afghanistan's government and religious leaders failed to mollify angry worshippers Friday, as a new wave of protests against the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base swept across the country.
While most of Friday's demonstrations ended peacefully, several degenerated into turbulent clashes between Afghan police and marchers chanting anti-American slogans.
 |
| Afghan demonstrators shout anti-US slogans as they carry a wounded man during a protest in Herat on Friday |
The deadliest such clash took place in Herat, a normally tranquil city in western Afghanistan, where demonstrators tried to march toward the U.S. consulate compound. At least six people were killed and 65 injured during confrontations with the Afghan security forces protecting the building, according to Mahiddin Noori, a spokesman for the Herat governor. The protesters failed to reach the consulate.
All in all, at least 20 people have been killed, including two U.S. soldiers, in four days of violence that erupted after U.S.-led coalition forces at the Bagram Airfield tried to burn a truckload of Islamic literature, including copies of the Quran, Islam's holy book.
Afghan workers said they rescued the books from the incinerator and then smuggled them off the base to show to local leaders. That ignited an escalating series of violent protests that have targeted coalition military bases, Afghan government buildings, United Nations offices and other symbols of Western presence in the country.
The U.S. has tried to mute the anger by launching an investigation and repeatedly apologizing for the occurrence. On Thursday, President Barack Obama expressed his "deep regret" to President Hamid Karzai in a personal letter to the Afghan president in which he vowed to hold to account those responsible for the Bagram incident.
U.S. military officials have said the books were set aside for destruction because Afghan detainees at the Parwan military detention center at Bagram were using them to trade messages and share extremist writing. But it remains unclear why the soldiers decided to burn copies of the Quran—a particularly incendiary affront to Muslims who view the book as the sacred word of God as relayed to the Prophet Muhammad.
On the eve of Friday's protests, Mr. Karzai and the country's religious leaders tried to limit the violence by urging people to express their anger peacefully. Preachers in mosques across Kabul tried to reinforce that message during Friday's weekly prayers.
"Those who burned the Quran are illiterate," thundered a preacher in Kabul's Khaled Ibn Walid mosque. "They don't know what religion is, but for us the solution is not violent demonstrations that kill our own people."
Similar messages in mosques across Kabul prevented chaotic anti-American marches from sweeping the city center. But elsewhere in the country and in the outskirts of Kabul, Afghan police trying to block the marchers from converging on Western compounds clashed with protesters.
In Herat, shooting erupted as hundreds of protesters, some of them armed, tried to march toward the U.S. consulate, local officials said. Outside the city, demonstrators burned two police stations, Mr. Noori said.
As worshippers gathered for Friday prayers, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, urged Afghans to be patient and wait for the results of the investigation.
"Working together with the Afghan leadership is the only way for us to correct this major error and ensure that it never happens again," he said in a statement.
On Thursday night, Gen. Allen, accompanied by the Afghan Army Chief of Staff Gen. Sher Karimi, flew to a joint U.S.-Afghan base in eastern Afghanistan where an Afghan soldier opened fire on American forces during a protest earlier that day, killing two.
"Now is not the time for revenge," Gen. Allen told U.S. soldiers gathered at the small base in Nangarhar province. "Now is the time to look deep inside your souls and remember your mission. Now is how we show the Afghan people that, as bad as that action was at Bagram, it was unintentional, and American's and ISAF soldiers do not stand for this." [1]
Also this is from ABC on the timing of the apology.
The White House says the president’s apology was conveyed before the U.S. troops were killed today.
Furthermore, the administration notes that the apology, which was included in a lengthy three-page letter from Obama to Karzai on a range of issues, is not unprecedented. In 2008, President Bush apologized to Iraq’s prime minister for an American sniper’s shooting of a Koran.[2]
No comments:
Post a Comment