US faces new challenge after riots in Kabul puncture illusion of calm
It started with a simple traffic accident.
But the riots it sparked ended with eight people dead and over a hundred injured.
For the accident took place in Kabul, where many locals are angry at the slow pace of reconstruction and the apparent wealth of foreign visitors - and the driver of the vehicle which caused the accident was a member of the US military, who have long angered locals with their aggressive driving technique, a method the US say is necessary for the security of their personnel.
In this case, the accident caused the death of one Afghani and the riots it sparked off killed seven more.
It was also an alarming day for an American military, already battling large-scale violence in Iraq and squaring up to an emboldened and nuclear-minded Iran. Now the future of Afghanistan, often trumpeted as a triumph for US foreign policy, is coming under increasing scrutiny.It seems increasingly clear that, even in Afghanistan, there is a time limit on how long any local population will continue to view any foreign intervention as benign.
Yesterday the US-led coalition said it killed up to 50 Taliban fighters in a bombing raid on a village in Helmand province, where 3,300 British troops are deploying. The air strikes took the death toll from the past two weeks to more than 350, according to the highest estimates.
Afghan police and soldiers rapidly deployed as rioters smashed police posts, flung rocks at US Humvee troop carriers and marched on the presidential palace, some chanting "death to America!"
Vehicles were set ablaze, businesses ransacked and aid agencies looted. Residents cowered inside their homes until a measure of calm returned in the late afternoon. In a televised address last night Mr Karzai appealed to Afghans' painful memories of the country's destructive civil war in the 1990s in a call for people to "stand up" to the rioters. "These people are the enemies of Afghanistan," he said. "You should stand up against these agitators and not let them destroy our country again."
The disturbances spread quickly to central districts frequented by foreigners and close to American and Nato military bases. Protesters tore down a billboard poster of Mr Karzai, burned a US flag and torched the offices of the aid agency Care International. "I'm pretty shaken," said Care's director, Paul Barker, speaking to the Guardian by telephone from inside the US embassy. "About half our office has been burned and everything inside destroyed."
This must surely draw a question over Bush's plans to build permanent military bases in Iraq - a much more volatile area - as much as it raises doubts over how long the Afghanis will allow the bases that have been set up there to protect the oil pipeline.
Foreign intervention will only be condoned as long as the local population feel they have something to gain.
In Afghanistan, they are starting to question what is in it for them. In Iraq they have already decided that they want the US to leave.
How desperately the US require their new military bases will have a lot to do with the future stability of both countries.
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Anti-U.S. Rioting Erupts in Kabul; at Least 14 Dead
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