Stop apologizing and start carpet bombing. Defeat jihad. What's it going to take?
A gunman killed two American advisers inside a heavily guarded government compound in Kabul Saturday, officials said, as protests against the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book roiled the country for a fifth day.
U.S. officials said the assailant remained at large as neither an apology from President Barack Obama nor gunfire from Afghan police could quench public outrage over what NATO insisted was an inadvertent desecration of the Koran.
NATO personnel are being recalled from Afghan ministries following the attack.
General John Allen says staff are being recalled “for obvious force protection reasons.” He says NATO is investigating Saturday's shooting and will pursue all leads to find the person responsible for the attack.
Two Afghan officials said the ministry shooting did not involve any Afghans. They spoke anonymously to discuss a NATO incident. One of the officials noted that the shooting occurred inside a secure room at the ministry that Afghan staff do not have access to.
NATO confirmed that two service members were killed, but spokesman Lt. Col Jimmie Cummings said “initial reports say it was not a Western shooter.” He declined to provide further information.
A U.S. official in Washington confirmed that the two killed were American. The official spoke anonymously to discuss information that had not been publicly released.
“The assailant is unknown, and an aggressive search is under way to determine who is responsible,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said.
NATO forces have advisers embedded in many Afghan ministries, both as trainers and to help manage the transition to Afghan control and foreign forces prepare to withdraw by the end of 2014. The Afghan Interior Ministry oversees all of the country's police, so has numerous NATO advisers.
Saturday's attack comes as tensions between the Afghans and the Americans are high following the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book at a U.S. base that sparked days of deadly protests
In a statement, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the gunman was an insurgent named Abdul Rahman. He said an accomplice inside the ministry helped him get inside the compound. He said the killings were a planned response to the Qur'an burnings.
“After the attack, Rahman informed us by telephone that he was able to kill four high-ranking American advisers,” Mujahid said. The Taliban frequently exaggerate casualty claims.
At least 25 people have been killed and hundreds wounded since Tuesday, when it first emerged that Qurans and other religious materials had been thrown into a fire pit used to burn garbage at Bagram Air Field, a large U.S. base north of Kabul.
Among those dead were two U.S. soldiers who were killed by one of their Afghan counterparts while a riot raged outside their base.
President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials apologized and said the burning of Qurans was a terrible mistake, but the incident has sent thousands to the streets in this deeply religious country.
In Kunduz, the capital of Kunduz province in northeast Afghanistan, more than 1,000 protesters demonstrated. At first they were peaceful, but as the protest continued they began throwing stones at government buildings and a U.N. office, said Sarwer Hussaini, a spokesman for the provincial police. He said the police were firing into the air to try to disperse the crowd.
Dr. Saad Mukhtar, health department director in Kunduz, said at least three protesters died and 50 others were injured during the melee.
The U.N. confirmed in a statement that its Kunduz compound was attacked, but said all its staff in Kunduz and in the country were unhurt and accounted for. The statement thanked Afghan security forces for their quick response to the assault.
The OIC represents 56 countries plus the Palestinian Authority. It claims also to represent Muslim immigrants — the “Diaspora” — in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. It is pan-Islamic: It seeks to unify and lead the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. In a manual first published in 2001, “Strategy of Islamic Cultural Action in the West,” the OIC asserts that “Muslim immigrant communities in Europe are part of the Islamic nation.”
The OIC, Bat Ye'or argues, is nothing less than a “would-be, universal caliphate.” It might look different from the caliphates of the Ottomans, Fatimids, and Abbasids. It might resemble, instead, a thoroughly modern trans-national bureaucracy. But, already, the OIC exercises significant power through the United Nations, and through the European Union, which has been eager to accommodate the OIC while simultaneously endowing the U.N. with increasing authority for global governance. Among the other organizations that Ye’or says are doing the OIC’s bidding are the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC).
In the eyes of OIC officials, no problem in the contemporary world is more urgent than “Islamophobia,” which it calls “a crime against humanity” that the U.N. and the EU must officially outlaw. Even discussing why so much terrorism is carried out in the name of Islam is to be forbidden. The OIC insists, too, that international bodies ban “defamation of religion,” by which it means criticism of anything Islamic. Defamation of Judaism, Christianity, Bahai, Hinduism, and even heterodox Muslim sects such as the Ahmadiyya is common within the borders of many OIC countries, a fact the OIC refuses to acknowledge. (more here)
OIC Condemns Quran Burning by US Troops in Afghanistan
TEHRAN (FNA)- Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu deplored the burning of the Holy Quran by the US forces in Afghanistan, and called for swift action to punish those responsible for the provocative act.
In a statement on Thursday, Ihsanoglu described the incident as a "deplorable act of incitement", and said that the act runs "contrary to the common efforts of the OIC and that of the international community …to combat intolerance, and incitement to hatred based on religion and belief."
The statement also called on "the concerned authorities to take swift and appropriate disciplinary action against those responsible."
Also on Thursday, US President Barack Obama sent a letter to his Afghan counterpart, apologizing for the acts of desecration.
The developments came as anti-US demonstrations are underway across Afghanistan over the burning of the Holy Quran at the US Airbase.
Media reports said that at least twenty Afghans have been killed since the beginning of protests on Tuesday.