The protests were the most open expression of opposition to the presence of the U.S. military in the country since Washington’s 2001 assault on Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban regime. Police cracked down on the demonstrators in a number of towns. At least 15 people were killed and more than 100 injured in the first four days of street actions, according to various press accounts.

The actions were sparked by a report in the May 9 Newsweek that investigators probing abuses at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay “had placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet.”

In response, more than 1,000 university and high school students marched through the eastern city of Jalalabad May 10. The demonstrators threw stones at a U.S. military convoy, the Associated Press reported, and U.S. troops in the area were blocked from entering their base by the protesters. The police attacked the demonstrators, killing four students and wounding more than 70.

“The students are calling in one voice: we don’t want American bases in Afghanistan,” medical student Layek Zakim told the New York Times. “Those Americans who come to our country and kill students should be arrested and executed.”

In Kabul, the country’s capital, about 500 students from Kabul University and Kabul Polytechnic took to the streets despite a heavy police presence. They demanded that Afghan president Hamid Karzai “prevent U.S. forces from frisking and arresting Afghans and drop plans for seeking long-term American military presence in Afghanistan,” reported the Frontier Post, published in Peshawar, Pakistan.

“Early in the week it was college and high school students who took to the streets chanting ‘Death to America,’ denouncing their government and demanding punishment for those they believe desecrated the Koran,” according to a Reuters dispatch from Kabul. “But they have been joined by older men, many wielding sticks and hurling stones, and some armed.”

Demonstrations rapidly spread to 10 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. A number took place in the northern part of the country, as well as in three Pakistani cities—Peshawar, Quetta, and Multan. Actions around this issue were also reported in Indonesia and the Gaza Strip.

Protesters also expressed their anger at the operations of some of the numerous “relief agencies” based in the country. In the town of Qala-I-Nau in Badghis province about 1,000 people demonstrated outside the offices of U.S.-based World Vision, and of Malteser, a German group backed by the Knights of Malta.

Seeking to quell the protests, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice issued a statement claiming that “disrespect for the holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be tolerated by the United States.” She said Washington would take “appropriate action” if these allegations proved to be true.

Many of the 520 inmates being held indefinitely for the past three-and-a-half years by U.S. military authorities at Guantánamo Bay are Afghans and Pakistanis. Some of those who have been released have accused U.S. personnel of defacing Korans as part of psychological and physical abuse they were subjected to during repeated interrogations.

“They did everything to us—they tortured our bodies, they tortured our minds, they tortured our ideas and our religions,” former prisoner Mohamed Khan told the Associated Press last year, when he and two dozen other prisoners were returned to Afghanistan.

Under pressure from the Pentagon, Newsweek on May 15 apologized for printing the item about desecration of the Koran at the Guantánamo U.S. military prison, and said it would now retract part of the article.

Shortly after the item appeared, the Southern Command announced that Gen. Bantz Craddock had ordered an investigation into the report. Newsweek wrote that its source for this item was a U.S. government official who requested not to be identified.  
 
 
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