By Griff Witte and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; A15
KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 6 -- Afghan police shot dead three people who stormed the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan Monday to protest caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, as continuing demonstrations in Muslim countries grew more deadly and in places took on a new anti-American tone.
In Indonesia, a crowd attempted to force its way into a U.S. consulate. In Iran, police used tear gas to push back firebomb-throwing demonstrators outside the Danish Embassy, while in Somalia a protester was killed when shots fired into the air set off a stampede.
Until Monday, Afghanistan had remained largely quiet as other parts of the Muslim world erupted in anger, generally directed toward European countries where newspapers had published the cartoons of Muhammad.
Afghan officials suggested that the violence outside Bagram air base indicated that insurgents were trying to capitalize on religious indignation.
"The protests started out about the cartoons," said Kabir Ahmed, the Bagram police chief. "But there is the possibility that al Qaeda is motivating these people to use violence against the Americans." Afghanistan's population has generally been supportive of the presence of the 19,000 U.S. troops here.
Ahmed said that the protesters outside the base chanted, "Down with U.S. forces! Down with the Afghan government!" and pelted U.S. military vehicles with stones, attacked a guard post manned by Afghan security forces outside the air base and ransacked local shops. "They wanted to enter the base and attack the U.S. forces," Ahmed said.
He said that some of them were armed and that Afghan police opened fire when they came under attack with rocks. In addition to the three protesters killed, five were wounded. Eight Afghan police officers were injured, Ahmed said.
U.S. soldiers were not involved in the confrontation, a U.S. military spokesman told the Associated Press.
In a separate incident in eastern Afghanistan's Laghman province, one protester was killed and four were injured as a crowd of 1,000 people attempted to storm a police headquarters, according to Mohammed Hamraz Nangarhari, the governor's spokesman.
Nangarhari said the protesters were injured by gunfire from within the crowd. But demonstrators told a different story. "The people started throwing stones, and after that the police fired on us directly," said Ezat, a shopkeeper who joined the protest.
An American soldier was killed Monday in Laghman, but U.S. military spokesman Lt. Mike Cody said there did not appear to be a connection between that incident and the protests.
In Kabul, hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside the Danish Embassy, then began throwing rocks as they marched through the streets. Rocks were directed at a U.S. base, but no serious damage was reported.
Authorities were bracing for larger demonstrations on Tuesday.
Worldwide, the protests are in their second week. They were spurred by the September publication in a Danish newspaper of 12 caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, pictures that have been reprinted in other European papers. Islam forbids any visual depiction of the prophet. Some of the cartoons mocked him, picturing him with a bomb for a turban.
In the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, police on Monday fired warning shots to repel a crowd outside the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city.
Two police officers were wounded, police said, and at least one protester was injured, according to television footage of the demonstration, which began at the Danish Consulate less than a mile away and moved to the U.S. facility.
Police estimated a crowd of 650 and U.S. officials said that as many as 1,000 protesters gathered in front of the consulate at about 3:30 p.m. They threw rocks and bottles and tried to breach a security wall, U.S. and Indonesian officials said.
Television footage showed several protesters, in a driving rain, banging on a 12-foot-high iron fence at the U.S. Consulate and trying to pry off a U.S. seal. In a clip broadcast by Metro TV, police beat protesters, many of whom wore white prayer caps. Police also aimed their rifles in the air, and at least 12 warning shots sounded.
"This was a precaution," Surabaya's police chief, Anang Iskandar, said in a telephone interview. "We did not ban the demonstration. But when it turned violent, with attempts at destruction, we had to stop it." Iskandar said the protesters charged that the United States also was responsible for the caricatures, but he did not explain how.
On Saturday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the images as "an act of blasphemy" and their publication as "clearly insensitive to the views and beliefs of other religions." But he urged the public to remain calm and accepted an apology extended by the Danish Embassy in Jakarta.
On Friday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the cartoons were "offensive," but that "we vigorously defend" individuals' right of expression.
In a Metro TV interview, an Islamic scholar dismissed the free speech defense. "I see a bigger agenda to discredit Islam," said Umar Shihab, chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulemas. In Iraq, people threw stones and shot at Danish troops in the southern part of the country, where about 500 are based. No one was hurt in the attacks, which took place as the soldiers stopped to help children hurt when a car swerved into a crowd.
"All these things add up to the idea that we might not be as popular as we have been, as a result of the prophet Muhammad drawings," Danish Capt. Filip Ulrichsen told the Associated Press. "It is unusual for anyone to shoot at us."
Iran, meanwhile, announced it was cutting commercial ties with Denmark, and the pro-Russian government of Chechnya said it would not allow Danish aid groups to work there.
Political leaders continued to try to quell the violence. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan co-wrote an article published in Monday's International Herald in which they called for "respect and calm." "We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation," they wrote, "which can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides in its wake."
Nakashima reported from Jakarta. Correspondent Jonathan Finer in Baghdad, special correspondent Yayu Yuniar in Jakarta and researcher Robert Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.
