September 17, 2012 1:05 pm
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By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and SANGAR RAHIMI / The New York Times
KABUL -- Hundreds of Afghans burned tires and pelted police officers and buildings with stones along a thoroughfare leading east out of Kabul on Monday, at one point nearing the high walls of a large American military base, in the first significant escalation of violence in Afghanistan over an anti-Islam film that has inflamed mobs in other parts of the Muslim world.
The outburst followed demonstrations and violence in more than 20 countries since last Tuesday, when the American ambassador in Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed in an attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi as protests spread from neighboring Egypt.
In Indonesia, news reports said, police firing tear gas and water cannons on Monday moved against hundreds of demonstrators who gathered outside the American Embassy in Jakarta to express opposition to the film, which many Muslims regard as blasphemous toward the Prophet Muhammad. Some protesters set fire to an American flag, while others hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails and burned tires.
Demonstrations also spread across Pakistan, where the government restricted Internet access to YouTube and other sites containing what the Telecommunications Ministry called anti-Islamic material. The police clashed with protesters outside the American consulates in Lahore and Karachi and dozens were reported hurt. There were unconfirmed accounts that at least one person was shot to death in the Upper Dir district of northwest Pakistan, where protesters set government properties on fire. In Islamabad, the American Embassy suspended public services.
In southern Beirut, Lebanon, thousands answered a call by Hezbollah to protest peacefully. They chanted "Death to America, death to Israel" and "America, hear us -- don't insult our Prophet," Reuters said.
Student protesters were also mobilized to denounce the film in Iran, where the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blamed what he called the the West's "Islamophobic policies of arrogance and Zionism" and dismissed American government criticism of the film as meaningless. In a speech to police cadets, reported by Iran's official news media, the ayatollah said Western countries "should acquit themselves of such a heavy crime not in words but in deed." In Afghanistan on Monday, as in other parts of the world, most of the protesters were young men, who chanted for the death of America, Israel, Britain and President Hamid Karzai's government.
The police here responded in force to quell the rioting. Scores of regular officers and riot police officers wearing helmets and protected by shields battled groups of young men throughout the morning, trying to keep the demonstrators from moving toward the center of Kabul.
There had been some protests in eastern Afghanistan on Friday over the video, with demonstrators burning an effigy of President Obama. But the protests on Monday were far more violent.
Mr. Karzai's government had gone to some lengths to keep a lid on anger over the American-made movie as news of the protests spread around the world. Afghan officials across the country gathered elders and religious leaders and told them that it was fine to speak out against the movie, but that they should urge people to stay calm and avoid violence.
The government also asked Internet providers to block sites hosting video, shutting down access to Google, YouTube and Gmail in the process. Access to all the sites appeared to have been restored on Monday afternoon, hours after the protests on Jalalabad Road had subsided.
The NATO-led coalition said the base that lies along Jalalabad Road, Camp Phoenix, had not been targeted by the protesters and was unaffected by the violence.
But outside its well-fortified walls, the charred remains of shipping containers could be seen, though it was impossible to tell from the blackened steel shells whether they had been carrying supplies for the base or were being used by others not connected to the military.
Ayub Salangi, Kabul's police chief, said about 50 police officers had suffered light wounds trying to keep the protesters in check. He, too, was left with some bruises and cuts from stones hurled by protesters at the scene.
At least two police cars were set ablaze, he said. By late morning, other smoldering vehicles could be seen along the road, as well as burning shipping containers and piles of flaming tires. Plumes of black smoke were visible from the center of the city.
For many of the people who live near Jalalabad Road or work at the shops and construction depots that line it, the protest was an unwelcome disruption that accomplished little apart from destroying property. A man in his mid-30s, who declined to be identified by name, cursed the protesters for burning tires and shouted at them, "Will your dad pay for the road's damages?" None of the protesters seemed to hear him.
"They can express their pure Islamic emotions, but this is not the way to do it," he said. "The government built this road with money we beg from foreigners, and now they are destroying it."
The protests abated by noon, and by midafternoon the road was clogged with its usual workday traffic.
Most officials offered only vague estimates of the crowd's size. Mr. Salangi said hundreds of people participated in the protest, an estimate in line with what other officials offered. But one senior police officer, Gen. Ahmad Fahim Qayam, who commands the quick reaction unit of the Kabul police, put the size of the protest at between 3,000 and 4,000 people.
Mr. Salangi described the protesters as "emotional" young men who had tried to press toward downtown Kabul in four or five separate groups.
The Afghan government has appeared eager to avoid a repeat of the violent and deadly protests that swept the country earlier this year over the inadvertent burning of Korans by American soldiers at a base north of Kabul.
Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/protests-over-contentious-film-spread-to-afghanistan-indonesia-653752/#ixzz26mBDdWPy |
