Deadly Protest in Afghanistan Highlights Tensions

Source: NY Times

KABUL, Afghanistan— At least eight Afghan civilians were killed and a dozen wounded Tuesday during a street protest in a volatile town along the Helmand River, after a raid on an Afghan home Sunday by American and Afghan forces. The raid was seized on by Taliban provocateurs who organized the protesters and pushed them toward violence, local officials said.

The incident, which American officers said they were investigating, highlighted the extreme volatility of the situation in southern Afghanistan and, in particular, in Helmand Province. Thousands of American Marines are moving into areas there that had previously stood as uncontested Taliban strongholds.

The protest began when several hundred Afghans gathered Tuesday in the central bazaar in the town of Garmsir, having heard reports that the American and Afghan forces had abused local Afghan women and desecrated a Koran in a nearby village two nights before. Local officials said the protest, which involved several thousand local Afghans, was organized by the Taliban’s “shadow” governor for Garmsir, Mullah Mohammed Naim.

“The Taliban were provoking the people,” Kamal Khan, Garmsir’s deputy provincial police chief said in a telephone interview. “They were telling the people that the Americans and their Afghan partners are killing innocent people, bombing their homes and destroying their mosques and also blaspheming their religion and culture.

more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/asia/13afghan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss