Afghan rally over NATO raid turns violent; 12 die

HEIDI VOGT, RAHIM FAIEZ

Asso­ci­ated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Anger over a night­time NATO raid flared into vio­lence in north­ern Afghanistan on Wednes­day as an esti­mated 1,500 peo­ple clashed with police and tried to storm a Ger­man mil­i­tary base in a protest that left 12 dead.

The riot sug­gests more trou­ble ahead for NATO as upcom­ing troop draw­downs are likely to make the alliance increas­ingly reliant on quick-strike raids on insur­gent hide­outs. Such raids often pro­duce results — most famously in the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden in Pak­istan — but deeply offend Afghans when they go wrong.

Demon­stra­tors swarmed the road lead­ing into the north­ern city of Talo­qan early Wednes­day, run­ning through a cloud of dust as they pumped their fists and shouted insults at Afghan Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai and the United States.

“Death to Karzai! Death to Amer­ica!” they yelled. The crowd car­ried aloft the bod­ies of four peo­ple — two men and two women — killed overnight in a NATO raid on the out­skirts of the city.

The pro­test­ers claimed that all four were civil­ians gunned down in their home in the mid­dle of the night by an inter­na­tional strike force. NATO said the dead were insur­gents and that all four — includ­ing the women — had tried to fire weapons at a NATO-Afghan team as they searched the house for an insur­gent arms trafficker.

Night raids tar­get­ing insur­gents reg­u­larly stir up con­tro­versy. Some Afghans argue that the raids, even if effec­tive, are an affront to a cul­ture that highly val­ues the sanc­tity of the home.

Res­i­dents often charge that inter­na­tional forces go after the wrong peo­ple or mis­treat civil­ians as they search com­pounds. The accu­sa­tions have per­sisted despite NATO’s suc­cess in reduc­ing civil­ian casu­al­ties and its agree­ment to con­duct night raids along­side Afghan forces.

Dis­tin­guish­ing mil­i­tants from civil­ians can be dif­fi­cult in many areas. Entire vil­lages are thought to be allied with the Tal­iban or other insur­gent groups.

NATO said Tuesday’s raid tar­geted a mil­i­tant work­ing with the Islamic Move­ment of Uzbek­istan — an insur­gent group allied with the Tal­iban in north­ern Afghanistan. The mil­i­tant was involved in arms traf­fick­ing and build­ing explo­sives, NATO said. The alliance did not say if he was killed or captured.

What began as a peace­ful demon­stra­tion at about 8:30 a.m. soon turned into a riot. The crowd started loot­ing shops and throw­ing stones at a small Ger­man base in the city. They fought back against police who went out to calm the demon­stra­tors, provin­cial Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said.

The riot­ers threw hand grenades and Molo­tov cock­tails into the base, wound­ing two Ger­man sol­diers and four Afghan guards, the Ger­man mil­i­tary said. It said the Ger­man sol­diers were in sta­ble con­di­tion. One was slightly wounded; the other, some­what more seriously.

Police and some of the riot­ers exchanged fire, said Faiz Moham­mad Tawhedi, a spokesman for the Takhar provin­cial gov­ern­ment. He said at least 12 pro­test­ers were killed and that 50 peo­ple were wounded — some of them police officers.

Offi­cials esti­mated that there were about 1,500 demonstrators.

Although the pro­test­ers called for Karzai’s death and accused him of being a U.S. stooge, the Afghan pres­i­dent later issued a state­ment crit­i­ciz­ing the NATO raid.

Karzai said the dead were four mem­bers of a fam­ily who were wrongly struck down. He also said the raid had not been coor­di­nated with Afghan forces — a charge that, if true, would be a breach of pro­to­col. NATO, how­ever, said the raid was con­ducted with a part­nered Afghan force.

Karzai repeat­edly con­demns night raids in his speeches even though West­ern offi­cials say he and most top Afghan offi­cials pri­vately favor the strikes as the most effec­tive way of under­min­ing the Tal­iban power structure.

The protests against night­time raids illus­trate a dan­ger for NATO as the first U.S. forces begin to with­draw in July amid grow­ing anti-foreigner sen­ti­ment in Afghanistan after nearly a decade of war.

Part of the idea behind last year’s buildup of 30,000 addi­tional U.S. troops was to pro­tect civil­ians so they would help drive out insur­gents. But as inter­na­tional troop lev­els decrease, NATO is expected to rely more not only on train­ing Afghan forces but also on tar­geted strikes against high-value operatives.

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful com­mando mis­sion against bin Laden’s hide­away in Pak­istani town of Abbot­tabad, some in the U.S. have called for more such operations.

Insur­gents, in turn, have promised ramped-up attacks to avenge bin Laden, who had close per­sonal ties with Afghan Tal­iban leader Mul­lah Mohammed Omar.

In the lat­est attack, a sui­cide bomber crashed a car into a police bus in east­ern Afghanistan, killing 14 peo­ple and wound­ing 16, said Zemeri Bashary, a spokesman for the Inte­rior Min­istry. Most of the casu­al­ties were police offi­cers, he said. The bus was trav­el­ing to a police acad­emy in the city of Jalal­abad city.

There was no claim of respon­si­bil­ity, but it matched the pat­tern of Tal­iban attacks against gov­ern­ment work­ers and secu­rity forces.

The Pak­istani wing of the Tal­iban has vowed to fight with “new zeal” fol­low­ing bin Laden’s death.

“We have the same tar­get, pro­gram and mis­sion,” the group’s deputy com­man­der, Wal­iur Rehman, told The Asso­ci­ated Press in an inter­view Mon­day. “Our ene­mies are NATO, Jews and Christians.”

Posted by AP News on May 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.