KABOL WITNESSED FIRST LARGE ANTI-AMERICAN DEMONSTRATIONS
KABOL 24 May (IPS) In the largest ever anti-American, anti-government
protests in Kabol, demonstrators chanted Saturday "Death to America",
"Death to Karzai", "Death to Zaher Shah" and "Death to
Bush" and attacked the American embassy in the Afghan capital with stones.
Demonstrators, most of them young people and students, were protesting the
Wednesday killing of four Afghan soldiers by American troops guarding the
heavily fortified embassy.
Witnesses said the Afghan troops were transferring unloaded weapons, mostly Kalashnikov rifles, from one building to another when they came under fire from US Marines.
This was the angriest demonstration held in Afghanistan since the toppling of the former Taleban government by American forces and the formation of Hamed Karzai’s interim government, observers pointed out.
"Parallel to slogans against the United States and the Karza’is government, demonstrators carried others reading "Long live Islam" and "Long live Mas’ood", in reference to the charismatic and popular commander of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Mas’ood, assassinated on 9 September 2001 by Arab terrorists dispatched by Ossama Ben Laden, the leader of al-Qa’eda terrorist network, the Iranian official news agency IRNA reported.
"No one knows if the Americans have come here to restore security and peace or killing people?" the agency quoted a certain Mohammad Khaled, a marcher, who has assured that the Afghans would "boot out American and all foreign forces from Afghanistan ‘as they have done with the British and the Russians before them".
Other demonstrators said they wanted an Islamic government, not an American-imposed one and demanded that the American soldiers who killed the Afghans be brought to court, IRNA said in a dispatch from Kabol.
The protesters marched past the nearby US embassy under a banner reading: "We want to judge the killers of the martyrs" referring to the killing of four Afghan soldiers by US forces.
US soldiers guarding the compound observed from watchtowers and through the main gate but did not react, as dozens of Afghan police in vans blocked the road past the embassy.
At least one foreign peacekeeping soldier was hurt and two vehicles damaged by stone-throwing protesters, witnesses said.
ISAF spokesman Colonel Paul Kolken said one soldier was slightly injured and had been treated and discharged. His nationality was being withheld.
"ISAF were just coincidentally passing by", he said, adding that Afghan police were responsible for security at the demonstration.
But eyewitnesses said armed Afghan police and soldiers made little effort to restrain the demonstrators, mainly teen-aged boys and young men.
After marching through the centre of the Afghan capital, the demonstrators gathered outside one of the entrances to the presidential palace where they were blocked by around 50 armed Afghan soldiers before heading to the embassy.
Two demonstrations earlier this month protesting about civil servants not being paid and against Karzai's government passed off peacefully. ENDS KABOL ANTI US DEMOS 24503