Kabul Traffic Accident Sparks Anti-US Riots (Updated 6/1)

"Afghan Army Patrols Kabul Amid Anger with US Troops," by Simon Cameron-Moore - Reuters (Kabul), 30 May 2006

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan troops patrolled the streets of Kabul on Tuesday after at least eight people were killed in the worst anti-U.S. riots in the capital since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

While a heavy security presence restored order on the streets, anger burned inside many Afghans over the behavior of U.S. troops after a fatal road accident involving a U.S. army truck sparked unrest in many parts of the city.

"They worry about their own safety. They only care about themselves," said Abdul Karim, a 28-year-old resident of the city, who nevertheless blamed criminals for turning protests into riots in order to go on a crime spree....

Monday's unrest was triggered by a U.S. soldier who lost control of his truck and smashed into a dozen vehicles killing at least five Afghans.

Furious residents stoned the convoy the truck was traveling in, prompting at least one of the U.S. vehicles to fire warning shots in the air, according to the U.S. military. The situation deteriorated further as Afghan police also opened fire to assist the convoy.

"It was all the Americans' fault," said Tahir Murad, 50, who witnessed the accident and its aftermath. "This kind of incident makes people feel more against the Americans."   

An Afghan health ministry official said at least eight people were killed in the clashes, though he said the figure could be higher. More than 100 people were admitted to hospital, many with gunshot wounds.

Ronald Neumann, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, issued a statement regretting the loss of life and blaming the crash on brake failure....

"Brake Failure on US Truck Caused Crash," by Daniel Cooney - AP (Kabul), 30 May 2006, as carried by the ABC News website

KABUL, Afghanistan May 30, 2006 (AP)— The U.S. military said Tuesday that the brakes on an American truck caused the deadly traffic accident that sparked the worst violence in the Afghan capital since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Hundreds of Afghan and coalition troops took up positions around Kabul on Tuesday to prevent further rioting. The city of 4 million was calm as stores reopened and residents commuted to work.

But many expressed dismay as they surveyed the damage from Monday's riots.

"Where were all the security forces yesterday?" asked Asadullah Chelsea, who owns a supermarket popular with foreigners. "I have lost thousands of dollars of stock."

Meanwhile, the death toll from the unrest rose to at least 11, most of them from gunshot wounds, according to three city hospitals where casualties were taken. Kabul Emergency Hospital said it had 66 wounded, all shot. Dozens of other wounded residents were at other hospitals....

Chanting "Death to America," rioters stoned the U.S. convoy involved in the accident Monday, then headed to the center of Kabul, ransacking offices of international aid groups and searching for foreigners. Smoke billowed from burning buildings along the path of destruction.

The violence erupted after the brake failure sent a large cargo truck careering into about a dozen vehicles at an intersection in Kabul, the U.S. military said. Up to five people were killed in the crash. It wasn't clear whether these deaths were in the tolls the hospitals reported.

The rioters claimed U.S. troops had shot and killed civilians at the scene of the accident.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition confirmed there was gunfire but said coalition personnel in one military vehicle only fired over the crowd. The coalition expressed regret for any deaths and injuries, and said there would be an investigation....

"Violence in Kabul Takes Western Forces by Surprise," by Hans De Vreij - Radio Netherlands, 30 May 2006.

The situation in the Afghan capital, Kabul, had remained relatively calm for the past couple of years, until Monday that is, when things suddenly changed after a US army convoy smashed at high speed into a number of cars, leaving at least five people dead. In the aftermath, the reaction on the streets of Kabul was one of public fury, not only directed at US military personnel, but also western aid agencies....

Monday's sudden outburst of violence in Kabul had certain immediate consequences, including the appearance of tanks and troops on the city's streets, implementation of a nighttime curfew and an emergency session of the Afghan parliament. Yet, the incident which sparked the turmoil was not particularly unusual. The American military personnel were driving at speed - possibly too much speed - which has become almost standard procedure since the number of - attempted - suicide attacks on military convoys has increased. In this case, however, the resulting traffic accident was like putting a match to dry paper, with the 'flames' that emerged in the form of mass public anger on the streets leading to even more loss of life.

Initially, public fury was turned against the troops who caused the accident in the first place, who responded by opening fire on the crowd, thus fanning the flames still further. Hysterical people now began turning on the Afghan police, following later by lashing out at anything with a 'western' connection, ranging from places of entertainment to offices used by aid agencies such as Care International or by western businesses.

Some sources have been reporting that it was already a well-known fact that the situation under the apparent surface of calm was extremely tense, with a high degree of discontent existing among the local population. True or not, the sudden violent outburst came as a total surprise, which could well point to both the United States and NATO lacking sufficient, reliable information about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan....

"Press at Odds over Kabul Riots" - BBC News (media report), 30 May 2006

Newspapers in Afghanistan comment widely on the anti-American protests in the capital, with one state-owned daily calling them a "disgrace".

Other government-run papers condemn the violence - which started when a US military truck crashed into other vehicles killing several people - and suggest that the rioters were using popular sentiment for their own ends.

Independent dailies take a different line, saying that the incident was a "terrorist act" and quoting eyewitnesses who claimed coalition troops were drunk.

The unruly demonstrations in Kabul yesterday were a disgrace to law and order and to the constitution in Afghanistan. From start to finish it was like an inferno fanned by foreign hands. At the same time the demonstrators were thieves, rogues and an undisciplined crowd who took advantage of the situation and robbed vendors, shops, and broke the windows of cars and offices. - state-owned Kabul Times

29 May was a general day of mourning and tragedy for Kabul residents. The incidents were painful and shameful because the peacekeepers and protectors of people's lives and property carried out a terrorist act and thus killed dozens and injured hundreds of people. On this day people learnt some new meanings of terms such as "co-operation" and "human rights". They came to know how much importance their international friends give them! - independent Cheragh

Also see:

"Many Afghans Resent Foreigners' Presence," by Edward Harris - AP (Kabul), 30 May 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan - Western aid workers drive past Afghan beggars cradling naked, dirty children. U.S. military vehicles race through trash-strewn streets with their guns pointed into traffic.

To many Afghans, foreigners are a privileged elite, earning hefty salaries and given to drinking alcohol while this shattered Islamic nation remains mired in violence and poverty.

That divide helped stoke Monday's deadly anti-Western riots, the latest of several bouts of unrest that have wracked Afghanistan in the past year....

Afghans generally are grateful to the U.S.-led military alliance for ousting the Taliban in 2001 and welcome help from international charities. But many residents also long to lift themselves out of poverty and take control of their destinies, more than four years after the downfall of the Taliban's strict Islamic rule.

"We don't want these foreigners, they should go home. They're damaging our society, the economy is terrible and we're so poor. And they're looting Afghanistan. Why aren't they building factories?" asked Faisal Agha, who was injured in the riots that left at least 11 dead and scores wounded.

"Now there's prostitution, alcohol. There's more vice," the 45-year-old policeman said from his hospital bed, his eyes puffy and face bruised after falling during Monday's chaos.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 foreign civilians are believed to be working in Afghanistan alongside 23,000 American troops and 9,000 members of a NATO-led multinational force, mostly from Western countries.

Foreign intervention has been a thread running through the past quarter-century of strife in Afghanistan.

Soviet forces invaded in 1979, and Arab fighters helped drive them out a decade later. After the Taliban took control in 1996, establishing a theocracy that banned music and television, and sheltered Osama bin Laden.

The U.S.-led invasion in late 2001 pushed the Taliban aside, a wrenching change that exposed many Afghans directly to Western culture for the first time as aid workers and military forces came to help rebuild the nation.

Four years later, many Afghans are unimpressed by what they have seen, although they are quick to distinguish between foreigners who are here to help and those seen as a negative influence.

"We have two kinds of foreigners here. Those that indulge in prostitution and alcohol, and we reject them," said Mohammed Anwar, standing outside a shop still smoldering Tuesday after rioters burned it because they believed it sold alcohol.

"But the others have come to help us in reconstruction and we welcome them," said the unemployed 45-year-old father of eight. "And they're far more numerous."

Still, even Afghans' famed hospitality — tea or soft drinks are mandatory for all guests — is being strained by the economic inequities and foreign military presence.

Unemployment for Afghans is about 40 percent, while foreigners live in spacious compounds and maneuver expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles past blue-shrouded women holding unclothed children and begging for money.

Rents in some areas have risen by 1,000 percent since the Taliban's ouster as international organizations have moved in, pricing most Afghans out of the market.

Prices of mutton quadrupled as comparatively expensive restaurants with largely foreign clientele blossomed around Kabul.

While the economy grew by 8 percent last year — spurred by the influx of aid and illicit revenues from the drug industry — many Afghans now feel worse off because inflation reached 16 percent.

There also is anger over the civilian deaths caused by coalition military action against Taliban guerrillas. The latest incident occurred last week, when a U.S. airstrike killed at least 16 civilians in a southern village. A rights group said as many as 34 civilians died....

Added 31 May 2006:

"Afghan Lawmakers Speak Out on US Crash," by Amir Shah - AP (Kabul), 31 May 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's parliament has approved a motion calling for the government to prosecute the U.S. soldiers responsible for a deadly road crash that sparked the worst riots in Kabul in years, officials said Wednesday.

The assembly passed the nonbinding motion Tuesday, after debating Monday's crash in which a U.S. truck plowed into a line of cars, killing up to five Afghans and sparking citywide, anti-foreigner riots, said Saleh Mohammed Saljuqi, an assistant to the parliamentary speaker.

"Those responsible for the accident on Monday should be handed over to Afghan legal authorities," Saljuqi cited the motion as saying.

A U.S. military spokeswoman, Lt. Tamara D. Lawrence, said she had not seen the motion and declined to comment.

Hours earlier, military spokesman Col. Tom Collins told reporters that the driver of the truck was not suspected of any wrongdoing and had not been arrested. He said the truck's brakes are believed to have overheated and failed....

"US Says Troops Fired in Self Defense in Afghan Riot," by Simon Cameron-Moore - Reuters (Kabul), 31 May 2006

KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. troops fired in self defense as a riot erupted after a fatal road accident in Kabul two days ago, the U.S. military said on Wednesday in an account of the incident that sparked the worst anti-American riots in the city since the fall of the Taliban.

"Our initial investigation ... shows fire came from the crowd and our soldiers used their weapons to defend themselves," Colonel Tom Collins told a news conference....

The accident occurred in Kabul's north during the morning rush hour, and within a few minutes of the crash Afghan police formed a line to protect the convoy from an angry crowd. A second U.S. convoy arrived on the scene around the same time....

Collins said video footage clearly showed U.S. soldiers firing rounds over the heads of a stone-throwing crowd of up to 500 people from a machine gun mounted on one of the 12 vehicles in the convoy involved in the accident.

But Collins was unable to say whether shots were fired from the crowd before the machine gunner opened up, or whether other soldiers in the convoy had fired.

"We just don't know yet who discharged their weapons or even at whom," Collins said.

He said that an investigation was going on into the incident that has damaged relations between the people of Kabul and foreign forces in     Afghanistan generally.

No U.S. personnel were wounded during the violence.

"Just because coalition soldiers weren't hurt or injured doesn't mean there wasn't imminent danger," said Collins, adding that video showed the troops were clearly in danger because of the proximity of the crowd to the convoy....

Collins defended the soldier at the wheel of the runaway truck for doing his utmost to avoid pedestrians and, echoing terms used by President Hamid Karzai, said opportunists, agitators and criminals were responsible for turning a protest over the accident into riots.

The driver was being questioned as part of a wide-ranging investigation, but he was not in custody, he added.

"After Riots End, Kabul's Residents Begin to Point Fingers," by Carlotta Gall (in Kabul) - the New York Times, 31 May 2006 (registration required)

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 30 — As they swept up broken glass and boarded up windows and doors on Tuesday, Kabul residents placed blame for Monday's rioting on young hoodlums and criminal gangs who seized on a fatal accident involving an American military convoy to spark a citywide conflagration.

But they also criticized the American military for its arrogance, saying military vehicles frequently crush civilian cars, and they doubted that the government or the military would conduct an honest investigation of the incident.

While a survey of hospitals on Monday found 14 people dead from the rioting, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday that 12 had been killed, including one policeman, and that 138 had been wounded. Afghan troops were deployed across the capital on Tuesday, sitting atop armored personnel carriers at main intersections. Gen. Jamil Junbish, the Kabul police chief, said a curfew would be enforced for a second night.

There was an unmistakably anti-government and anti-American tinge to Monday's protests. In the main square, rioters burned a huge banner of President Hamid Karzai, who is frequently caricatured by his opponents as a puppet of Washington. A similar banner of the late commander of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated by Al Qaeda on Sept. 9, 2001, remained untouched.

While Mr. Karzai blamed opportunists for the violence, many in the city many in the city, including Western diplomats and aid workers, said the protests appeared spontaneous and were aggravated by frustration with joblessness and the slow pace of reconstruction, despite the hopes raised by a new Afghan government.

"It was frustration at the whole process, especially the lack of reconstruction and security," said Faheem Dashty, the editor of The Kabul Weekly newspaper. "For the last four years, people were waiting to see some changes in the government. But they did not see it."

Other residents complained about the presence of not only foreign troops but also Western aid workers, who live in upscale compounds, drive fancy S.U.V.'s and, in many Afghans' minds, are responsible for the spread of vices like alcohol consumption and prostitution. Protesters even trashed the headquarters of CARE International, one of the longest-serving nongovernmental organizations — and much loved in Kabul for its work with war widows and the poor.

But CARE officials said the group was victimized only because of its location. "It was unfortunate that we were in the way of this demonstration," said Paul Barker, the country director for CARE, as he sat at a borrowed desk near the smoldering ruins of his burnt-out office.

The American and Afghan authorities sought to reduce tensions from the fatal crash on Monday, in which an American military truck crashed into 12 cars, killing five people and wounding scores.

The United States Embassy expressed its regret at the loss of life and blamed a mechanical failure. "The vehicle apparently lost the ability to brake due to a mechanical failure," said Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann in a statement that also promised compensation for the victims and a full investigation.

General Junbish also said there was no doubt the car crash, in the northern district of Khair Khana, was an accident, and dismissed claims by demonstrators that the truck had deliberately rammed cars....

"Statement by Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann on Yesterday's Accident in Kabul" - press release, US Embassy in Kabul, 30 May 2006

We deeply regret the loss of life that resulted from yesterday’s tragic traffic accident in Kabul, which occurred when a Coalition military vehicle apparently lost the ability to brake due to a mechanical failure.  We extend our condolences to the families of those killed or injured and will ensure in accordance with established policy that those who were harmed in the accident, and are entitled, are compensated.

We are confident that the Coalition military and the Afghan Government, in full cooperation, will complete a comprehensive investigation.

We also join with the Government of Afghanistan and the international community in calling for calm and restraint as the citizens of Kabul mourn yesterday’s events.  One tragedy must not be allowed to escalate and cause further sadness and loss.   

"Reflections after Riots in Kabul," by Alastair Leithead (in Kabul) - BBC News, 30 May 2006

...The spark [for the riot] was a road crash - an accident that the American-led coalition said on Tuesday was caused by brake failure on a truck heading down a hill into Kabul.

"The driver, very experienced in the operation of this kind of vehicle," a coalition spokesman said, "took evasive action to avoid hitting pedestrians including hitting several unoccupied parked cars in an effort to slow the truck."

And the reason for the convoy, he added, was "a logistics mission in support of our efforts to help the Afghan people".

Those who witnessed the crash saw it differently.

They saw an American convoy ploughing into civilian vehicles and then eyewitnesses and a government official said the US troops then opened fire into the crowd, not just over it.

It was that which raised tempers - a high-level western official admitted the immediate aftermath of the crash "was not handled well".

It is a perception which started the spontaneous protests off, and no doubt there was an element of organisation in the rioting that followed.

On the whole, people have supported the international community's efforts in Afghanistan, but the armoured cars speeding through the log-jammed roads and the way American troops are perceived as gung-ho has contributed to the anti-American sentiment.

President Karzai has criticised the coalition for not taking enough care to avoid civilian casualties in bombing raids, innocent people have on a number of occasions been fired upon by nervous soldiers for approaching checkpoints in the wrong manner.

A shopkeeper in Kabul summed up the more reasonable viewpoint of Kabulis: "We support the presence of the American forces in the current situation as they have come here under the mandate of the United Nations - right now we need these troops.

"But there is a lot of poverty and a lot of problems with unemployment - I am not happy with the way aid money has been given out."

And that is perhaps more at the root of the problem than anything else - the feeling that despite the billions of dollars of aid and the new democratic systems, many of the poorest people have not noticed much of a difference.

Another man in the market was more critical.

"We have started opposing the Americans because a year ago if they had an accident they would come out and apologise and they would pay compensation, but now they don't do that, and people have started losing their patience.

"People are not happy because the aid money has not reached them - there are no new irrigation canals, no roads and people are getting poorer each day."...

In the aftermath of an event like the Kabul riots, it's normal to ask what could have been done differently to prevent things turning out as they did. There are a number of obvious and unrealistic suggestions -- that Coalition troops in Kabul use different routes or drive more slowly (there probably are no feasible alternate routes, and convoys have security reasons for driving at speed); that Coalition forces maintain vehicles more carefully and train troops to respond to riots more appropriately (accidents happen; people make mistakes).

The one thing I can think of that might have made a difference would have been a more careful tending of the international community's local public relations -- not in the sense of putting a happy face on events, or flogging news about the money and good works the international community brings to Afghanistan, but rather in the sense of understanding the Kabul public's situation and its concerns, resentments, hopes, and fears, and taking account of those attitudes and needs in deciding what the international community would do and how it would do it.

Added 1 June 2006:

"US Troops Shot 3 Afghans in Crowd: Police," by Sayed Salahuddin - Reuters (Kabul), 1 June 2006

KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. troops fired into a crowd of stone-throwing rioters, killing at least three Afghans, as their convoy left the scene of an accident that triggered anti-American riots, Kabul's chief of highway police said on Thursday.

General Amanullah Gozar told Reuters he had witnessed Monday's incident, from the point when a U.S. military truck ran out of control down a hill, crashing into vehicles and killing at least five people, to the clashes afterwards, and when U.S. troops opened fire.

"As a result of their firing, one young boy and two other people were killed," Gozar said.

The U.S. military says small arms fire was heard coming from the crowd, and the crowd overpowered a police line formed to protect the convoy as they tended to injured and collected the damaged vehicle before withdrawing.

"Our soldiers thought they were being fired on from the crowd and they fired their weapons in self defense," said Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence, a spokeswoman at the U.S.-led coalition headquarters in Kabul. She said an investigation was still in its early stages.

At a news conference a day earlier, Colonel Tom Collins said video footage showed troops fired a machine gun mounted on one of the 12 vehicles in the convoy, but aimed over the heads of the crowd. He said he did not know whether soldiers at any time fired directly into the crowd.

The United States and the western-back government of President Hamid Karzai can ill afford the controversy, with an insurgency in the south and east passing through its bloodiest phase since the overthrow of the Taliban government in late 2001....