Afghanistan Koran Protest Leaves At Least 8 Dead At U.N. Compound

[High_Gravity]

Same shit, different day in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan Koran Protest Leaves At Least 8 Dead At U.N. Compound

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Eight foreigners were killed Friday after demonstrators protesting a reported burning of the Muslim holy book stormed a U.N. office in northern Afghanistan, opening fire on guards and setting fires inside the compound, a top Afghan police official said.

The topic of Quran burning stirred outrage among millions of Muslims and others worldwide after a small American church in Florida threatened to destroy the holy book last year. The Florida pastor had backed down but purportedly went through with the burning last month, prompting protests in three Afghan cities.

Munir Ahmad Farhad, a spokesman in Balkh province, said the protest in Mazar-i-Sharif began peacefully when several hundred demonstrators gathered outside the U.N. mission's compound to denounce the Quran's destruction.

It turned violent when some protesters grabbed weapons from the U.N. guards and opened fire on the police, then stormed the building, he said. "I can see the smoke over the compound," he said.

Gen. Daud Daud, commander of Afghan National Police in several northern provinces, said those killed included five Nepalese guards who were working for the U.N. and two other foreigners employed at the complex. He said one other foreigner was wounded. Later, Rawof Taj, deputy police chief in Balkh province, said the injured individual had died.

Dan McNorton, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, confirmed that people working for the U.N. had died in an attack on the operation center, but he could not provide details.

"The situation is still confusing and we are currently working to ascertain all the facts and take care of all our staff," he said from his office in Kabul.

Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, had left Kabul for Mazar-i-Sharif to personally handle the situation, he said.

Mohammad Azim, a businessman in Mazer-i-Sharif, said that clerics with loudspeakers drove around the city in two cars on Thursday to invite residents to the protest. After Friday prayers at a large blue mosque in the city center, clerics again called on worshippers to attend a peaceful protest.

Afghanistan Koran Protest Leaves At Least 8 Dead, 2 Staffers Beheaded

 

[Vel]

The more I look at the situation in Afghanistan, the more convinced I am that we've made a tremendous and costly error in trying to bring that nation into this century. We should have leveled the cursed place.

 

[Ropey]

Nothing new here.

UN Staffers Beheaded As Afghans Protest Quran-Burning

Eight United Nations workers were killed --at least of which were beheaded-- in a northern Afghan city during a protest against a Florida pastor's Quran-burning. ... Afghan National Police said five of the dead were guards and two were people ... Death to Israel" after Friday prayers before storming the compound.

Eight United Nations workers were killed --at least of which were beheaded-- in a northern Afghan city during a protest against a U.S. pastor's Quran-burning. The protest started peacefully but turned violent when demonstrators stormed the office in Mazar-e Sharif on Friday, shooting at guards and setting fire inside the compound. The violence was triggered by reports that Florida pastor Terry Jones--who halted plans to set fire to a Quran on last year's 9/11 anniversary-- supervised a burning of the Islamic holy book on March 20. Afghan National Police said five of the dead were guards and two were people employed at the complex. Later, a foreigner died of their injuries. The BBC reported that protesters chanted "Death to the USA, Death to Israel" after Friday prayers before storming the compound.

More...

 

[High_Gravity]

Ropey the sad thing is you are right, this is nothing new and there are going to be many more incidents like this to come in that country.

 

[Vel]

I sit here and realize that we lost 6 members of The Screaming Eagles yesterday in order that some ignorant Afghani, that isn't smart enough to realize that it was fucking paper and ink, can go on a killing spree in the name of a God that is so weak that he can't smite the infidel on his own. So sad.

 

[Ropey]

I sit here and realize that we lost 6 members of The Screaming Eagles yesterday in order that some ignorant Afghani, that isn't smart enough to realize that it was fucking paper and ink, can go on a killing spree in the name of a God that is so weak that he can't smite the infidel on his own. So sad.

The madrassas teach this Vel. This is what they teach. It's not that they are not smart enough to see that this is only paper and ink, they are taught from babyhood to take a victim stance any time they see their belief system denigrated. Then they can perform jihad and kill pretty much anyone.

This is what they are taught instead of moderation.

 

[High_Gravity]

I sit here and realize that we lost 6 members of The Screaming Eagles yesterday in order that some ignorant Afghani, that isn't smart enough to realize that it was fucking paper and ink, can go on a killing spree in the name of a God that is so weak that he can't smite the infidel on his own. So sad.

The madrassas teach this Vel. This is what they teach. It's not that they are not smart enough to see that this is only paper and ink, they are taught from babyhood to take a victim stance any time they see their belief system denigrated. Then they can perform jihad and kill pretty much anyone.

This is what they are taught instead of moderation.

Well I'll tell you one thing, if the madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan are allowed to be open for business, events like this will continue to happen, with or without US Troops on the ground. Pakistan and Afghanistan are not going to turn into Sweden once the Allies leave.

 

[Vel]

And yet there are people that think that this religion can somehow be meshed into and become compatible with American life. I just can't see how that's possible.

( cue up the " it's only the radical fringe" excuses.. in 5..4...3.. )

 

[Ropey]

Bloody protests over Qur'an burning spread to Kandahar City

Saturday's bloodshed in the city, regarded as the spiritual home of the Taliban, followed by 24 hours the deaths of 12 United Nations workers and Afghan civilians during the sacking of the UN compound in the normally peaceful northern city of Mazir-i-Sharif. The Afghan government also attributed that violence — in which three Europeans including a Norwegian woman died — to the Taliban.

Business districts in Kandahar City were under a self-imposed lockdown Saturday after nine men died and scores were injured during bloody protests over the burning of a Qur'an by a Christian fundamentalist clergyman in Florida.

The crackle of gunfire could still be heard in the city hours after the protest was quelled by Afghan security forces. The demonstration involved about 150 men who attacked shops and set tires alight, according to a Reuters reporter.

Bloody protests over Qur'an burning spread to Kandahar City

 

[Caroljo]

So much for the "Religion of Peace" crap they try to convince us of!! They can burn the American Flag, they can burn the Christian's Bible...but heaven (or Hell?) forbid that we do the same to them!

 

[High_Gravity]

And it goes on and on.

Afghan Policeman Kills 2 NATO Soldiers

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A "rogue" Afghan border policeman shot dead two foreign soldiers on a training mission on Monday, and hundreds of people turned out on the streets for a fourth day of protests against the burning of a Koran by a fundamentalist U.S. pastor.

Up to a thousand angry residents in eastern Jalalabad city blocked the main highway to Kabul and set alight effigies of the pastor who presided over the Koran burning, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for the provincial governor.

Hundreds held peaceful protests in neighboring Laghman and nearby Paktia provinces. In southern Helmand province, residents of Lashkar Gah were coming out for a demonstration when a thwarted suicide attack cleared the streets.

Police spotted two men driving into the central court and opened fire, the Helmand provincial governor's office said.

One was seriously wounded and the other managed to detonate his explosives, wounding one policeman and two civilians, but did not kill anyone.

About 20 people have been killed and nearly 150 wounded over three days of protests in north and south Afghanistan that degenerated into violence, although other large gatherings in some parts of the country ended peacefully.

Twelve people were killed and more than 110 wounded in Kandahar over Saturday and Sunday, where demonstrators waving Taliban flags and shouting "Death to America" burned cars, smashed shops and sacked a girls' high school.

Afghan Policeman Kills 2 NATO Soldiers

 

[LibocalypseNow]

Aren't Muslims fun? And they're so tolerant & peaceful too...Yea lessons learned here: Don't become a Muslim and never ever live in a Muslim Nation. Class dismissed.

 

[Malcom X]

We invade their country, we set up a puppet government, we excercize colonialism, mercantalism, and militarism against their people, then we insult their culture, their religion, their way of life.

What do we expect?

 

[High_Gravity]

Aren't Muslims fun? And they're so tolerant & peaceful too...Yea lessons learned here: Don't become a Muslim and never ever live in a Muslim Nation. Class dismissed.

 

[Peter Dow]

Afghan mob kills UN workers.

On Friday, April 1st 2011, an angry mob was incited to attack a UN compound in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. The mob stormed the base and 7 UN workers were killed.

• 4 British-trained Nepalese soldiers or "Gurkhas",
• Lt. Col. Siri Skare, a 53-year-old Norwegian military attaché—a former fighter pilot—seconded to the U.N., along with
• Joakim Dungel, a 33-year-old Swede who had been working in the human-rights office for less than two months, and
• Filaret Motco, a 43-year-old Romanian who headed the mission's political section.

Too much internet comment has been posted elsewhere debating the pretext, excuse or perceived insult which was used by the mob's ringleaders to incite the mob to attack. My posts are intended to leave that subject well alone.

I reject that other discussion as irrelevant to the real needs here which are a discussion of how and why UN workers were vulnerable, undefended and left to die and who is responsible.

 

[Peter Dow]

How it went down

The Wall Street Journal: Inside the Massacre at Afghan Compound



The failures point by point

Only about 60 police were deployed, and they appeared uncertain how to respond. Initial attempts to disperse the crowd by firing warning shots appeared only to inflame the demonstrators.

Useless policing. Civil police need to keep protesting crowds or mobs intent on attack (hard to tell the difference initially) at an agreed protest line, which if passed without permission, especially in large numbers who can't be arrested then the attacking mob should be shot. It is up to the civil police to control the crowd. If they don't hold the crowd back it is the civil authorities fault when a mob gets shot down.

They phoned for help from the nearby military bases of German and Swedish forces, according to a person briefed on the situation.

Useless. Nearby is not near enough. The UN base or compound should be embedded within ISAF bases so an attack on the UN looks like an attack on ISAF, which it is.

The U.S.-led military said the situation "escalated rapidly" and that a swift-reaction team didn't arrive until after rioters were gone.

Useless. If the UN were depending on "swift" being swift enough to save them, they were wrong and misled. The UN should have leadership which tells them - you are not safe being "nearby" you need to be surrounded by a competent military defence.

Once demonstrators flooded the compound,

Useless compound defence architecture. It should be impossible for a crowd to breach a secure compound and if they try there should be fire power to kill those attempting to breach the compound or base.

a dozen Afghan police guards—the first line of defense—dropped their weapons

Useless guards. A dozen professional loyal soldiers manning 4 machine guns could probably have saved the day even at that stage.
The Afghan police are neither professional nor loyal to the UN so the UN should never have put their lives in the hands of Afghan police.

Inside the compound, a small contingent of Nepalese Gurkha guards working for the U.N. faced a conundrum: They were under U.N. orders not to open fire on demonstrators. The videos show one guard feebly trying to wave an elderly demonstrator out of the compound.

Gurkhas are not useless man for man. But 4 to 6 Gurkhas is not enough to hold off such crowd who by this time are armed with guns taken from the police.

When a mob breaches a secure compound they are clearly an attacking mob not "demonstrators". The senior members of the UN should have made that clear. If the Gurkhas had been better led they would have been able to put up more of a fight, but expecting so few of them to make up for failings everywhere else is unrealistic.

Inside the building, other attackers targeted one of the safe rooms. The door proved little protection against the mob.

Useless. Defence architecture needs to be more secure areas within secure areas. Those inside a safe room or bunker within a compound or base need to be able to kill those trying to enter the safe room.

The attackers searched the darkened bunker with a lamp and discovered Lt. Col. Siri Skare, a 53-year-old Norwegian military attaché—the former fighter pilot—seconded to the U.N., along with Joakim Dungel, a 33-year-old Swede who had been working in the human-rights office for less than two months, and Filaret Motco, a 43-year-old Romanian who headed the mission's political section.

Useless. Any defence attache worth their salt would know they were sitting in a death trap and would have refused to be responsible for such a poorly defended UN compound and would have ordered everyone out and relocated to the ISAF base.

Norway is a sick monarchy with a King of Norway who thinks it is funny or cute to appoint a penguin in Edinburgh zoo as one of his senior officers. I am not kidding.

The Norwegian military is not right in the head to have allowed UN staff into that suicidal UN compound.

Norway is responsible for the Nobel Peace prize and that is what happens to those who trust the Norwegian King, his peace prize or his military attaches. The Norwegian King gets you killed. Remember that.

 

[Peter Dow]

This is a primarily a problem of lame security at the UN compound: badly constructed, probably poorly located, insufficiently guarded, guards insufficiently armed. Poor organisation from start to finish.

All that is needed is to be better armed and trained than the attacking mob, as this video from the movie "Zulu" illustrates.

Zulu - Final Attack (YouTube)

You need to have enough defensive fire power to stop as many as keep attacking

 

[Peter Dow]

It is missing the point entirely to consider what the mind-set of the attacking mob might have been. Who cares what their motives for attacking are? It matters not when you are defending. What matters is to be armed and prepared to stop and repel their attack.


Ban Ki-Moon to blame.

Yes you can break this down into individual failures but the failure is one of leadership at the very top of the UN organisation.

If anyone is to be held responsible over this, it should be Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General.

This importance of this story is the shocking fact that UN bases in Afghanistan are practically undefended and a mob could easily storm a base and kill those inside.

UN security is a joke.

The UN needs to sack the UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon for his gross incompetence in failing to defend UN personnel.

Ban Ki-Moon: totally useless.

The UN has a lot of great principles to uphold - universal human rights etc, but these need to be upheld at the point of gun, with proper military organisation, which the UN should be able to do, in principle, but with the wrong leadership, like Ban Ki-Moon's wrong leadership, fails to do.

The world's dictators don't want UN principles imposed upon their countries - they'd rather lock up or kill their political opponents - so these dictatorial governments would rather the UN was ineffectual, defenceless and impotent, like Ban Ki-Moon is.

That is why so many of the rotten governments of the world get to together at the UN to appoint such useless "hearts and flowers" types like Ban Ki Moon or Kofi Annan.

The UN leadership must prevent UN workers being killed as they go about the UN's business - by for example, making sure that UN compounds are properly defended with a robust military not afraid to shoot violent attacking mobs like that Afgan mob who killed the 7 UN workers in Mazar-e-Sharif.

We need to get some good military, security and safety advisors in position with orders to defend UN workers' lives using all means necessary, including machine-gunning attacking mobs no matter how many attack.

I want the UN leadership to defend our guys, to take sides, to realise this is war and to fight it to win.

I want the life of one loyal UN worker to be valued more by the UN high command than the lives of all in an attacking mob because we need those UN workers to achieve the UN's long term goals and we don't need any of those in such attacking mobs.

 

[Peter Dow]

The right to protest, but not the right to kill

I am the last one to suggest machine-gunning protesters or demonstrators, having been a protester or demonstrator myself on a number of occasions.

A mob incited to lethal violence is a different thing from a crowd of peaceful demonstrators and our soldiers need to know the difference and react differently in both cases.

The mob attack on the UN compound was not a case of spray painting "Go home infidels" and smashing a few windows. This was a determined attempt to enter a "secure" (supposedly) base wherein people are being defended to inflict mob violence on those inside.

This was not an attack on property or vandalism but a murderous mob, there is a difference, and everyone has the right of self-defence in such circumstances.

The chances of reasoning with or negotiating a peaceful outcome with such an enraged mob are slim. You should always have the fire-power available to kill such a mob and be prepared to fight to survive.

The defence architecture of a military or diplomatic base - that means - security barriers, fences, walls, gates, guard posts etc - needs to be carefully designed so that only welcome guests, in good order, can enter with permission.

It is the responsibility of the civil authorities on the outside to hold any angry mob back outside the exterior defence barrier.

An angry, violent mob which breaches the defence barriers must expect to be shot.

Now, it is different if it is an essentially peaceful crowd of demonstrators. If, for example, it is some disarmed students occupying their administrative headquarters to protest education cuts, that is different. I don't know of any occasion in Britain anyway when the students' union has killed university administrators.

However, we are talking about Afghanistan where the locals often are armed and there is a war going on, don't you know?

The defence architecture of this UN compound in Mazar-e-Sharif, was inadequate in the extreme and the numbers, quality, loyalty and arming of the guards was also inadequate in the extreme.

This is not a case of being "wise after the event". This is basic military tactics. The UN secretary general and his senior security advisors should not have put UN staff in the hands of such poor military experts as are advising them.

The failure for appointing people who don't know what they are doing is the responsibility of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon who the UN should sack forthwith.

 

[Peter Dow]

Ban Ki-Moon is useless, he is failing to properly organise the military defence of UN workers in Afghanistan and elsewhere and UN workers are being killed like the 7 killed in Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday, 1st April 2011.

If not Ban Ki-moon then who for UN Secretary General?

Condoleezza Rice for UN Secretary General


I am hoping that Condi as UN Secretary General would find the weaknesses in the UN secretariat and administration and purge the incompetents whoever they are.

We need Condi as UN Secretary General, and I'll be her head of security, if she'll have me.

What would Condi do?

All I can say for sure is what I would do if I were responsible for UN security.

I can't promise that Condi would appoint me as her Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security or that she would even give me a second thought. She has always seemed to ignore me.

So I can't even promise that if Condi was made UN Secretary General she would instruct her Under-Secretary-General for Security and Safety to take expert advice from me.

In fact the guy that Ban Ki-moon appointed to that job, Gregory B. Starr

SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS GREGORY B. STARR OF UNITED STATES AS UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR SAFETY AND SECURITY[/url]
6th May 2009

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced today the appointment of Gregory B. Starr of the United States as Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security. Mr. Starr will replace David Veness.

used to work as US Director of Diplomatic Security responsible for the security of US diplomats.

Gregory B. Starr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gregory B. Starr is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security. He was selected by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on May 6, 2009.[1]

Prior to his appointment with the United Nations, Starr was the Director of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), and the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary within Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) from March 1, 2007.

So Starr was the guy watching Condi's back as secretary of state. He may even have got his job at the UN working for Ban Ki-moon with a reference from Condi. I don't know.

This guy Starr might not be up to his job at the UN but maybe it is because he is not getting the support he needs from the UN Secretary General? Maybe if Condi was his boss he would perform better?

I am certainly not going to vouch for Starr. If Starr is the problem I would advise Condi to sack or demote him. If that was the right move to take I feel Condi would take the right move, if not on my advice then on the advice of her other supporters.

Condi has a lot of clever friends and supporters and we would not see her fail just because she has inherited someone in the staff who is not up to the job.