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http://snipurl.com/f6dt With a little help from our friends Sarah Chayes The New York Times FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2005 KANDAHAR, Afghanistan Even as some Afghans went on deadly rampages earlier this month, ostensibly in anger over reports that U.S. interrogators at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, had desecrated a Koran, others, even in Afghanistan's most conservative and anti-American provinces, chose instead to hold brief, peaceful protests. For me, after three years in southern Afghanistan, something felt not quite right about the more virulent demonstrations. The instant tip-off was that they were initially led by university students. Afghans and Westerners in Kandahar have often wondered at the number of Pakistani students in what passes for a university here. The place is pathetically dilapidated, the library a locked storeroom, the medical faculty bereft of the most elementary skeleton or model of the human body. Why would anyone from Pakistan come here to study? Our unshakable conclusion has been that the adroit Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, is planting operatives in the student body. These students can also provoke agitation at Pakistani officials' behest, while affording the government in Islamabad plausible deniability. In both Kandahar and Kabul, alert Afghan officials were able to calm demonstrations by holding discussions with student leaders, an indication of the degree to which protesters' actions were manipulated and not the result of spontaneous outrage. In other words, it's a mistake to focus on the now notorious Newsweek article about the Koran's desecration as the cause of the recent demonstrations in Afghanistan. Instead, the reason was President Hamid Karzai's May 8 announcement that Afghanistan would enter a long-term strategic partnership with the United States. Such an alliance discomfits Afghanistan's neighbors. Pakistan, for one, is used to treating Afghanistan as an all but subject territory. The events of Sept. 11 and the sudden arrival of the United States changed all that, to the muted chagrin of Islamabad. Although Pakistani officials have mastered their role as allies in the "war on terrorism" and play it convincingly, they would like nothing better than to see the United States pull out of Afghanistan. What better, then, than to project Afghanistan as a volatile place, hostile to Americans? The Iranian government, too, is likely to observe the tightening ring of American military installations around its country's borders with concern. Several Afghan investigators looking into the instigation of the recent riots, especially in Kabul, told me that if anything, the involvement of Iranian agents was even more pronounced than that of Pakistanis. Finally, Afghan opponents of Karzai's government - of various stripes - were also seen to play a role in inciting the demonstrations. Yet, Americans need to realize that for all the artificial nature of the conflagration, fires cannot be started without tinder - in this case, popular exasperation with the post-Taliban order and shock over some aspects of American conduct. What most Afghans have complained to me most consistently about is the inexplicable staying power of predatory, corrupt and abusive officials, on both the provincial and national level. By blindly allying themselves with some of the most destructive elements of Afghan society, American forces paint themselves in the ugly colors of their Afghan proxies. The extortions, murders, unwarranted searches and unfair monopolies on lucrative work contracts are seen as integral components of American policy. Somehow, in the three and a half years that the United States has been here, it has not figured out how to avoid this trap. On their own, the fatal beatings of probably innocent detainees and the use of religiously based sexual humiliation at the prison on the American base in Bagram would be sufficient pretext for troublemakers to provoke a riot, never mind Newsweek. Our safety and survival depend increasingly on our ability to forge profound, cooperative relationships based in mutual comprehension with Muslim peoples. But when the United States can be plausibly depicted, by Pakistani operatives or Muslim extremists, as a country with little regard for the human dignity of Muslims, such friendships founder. (Sarah Chayes, a former NPR reporter, has been doing development work in Kandahar since 2002. ) _____________________________ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. 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