{"id":1009,"date":"2011-04-14T13:27:05","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T17:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacy\/?p=1009"},"modified":"2011-04-10T13:27:16","modified_gmt":"2011-04-10T17:27:16","slug":"afghanistan-deadly-response-to-koran-burning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/2011\/04\/afghanistan-deadly-response-to-koran-burning\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan: Deadly Response to Koran Burning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An area considered a critical bastion of security in Afghanistan is experiencing violent and fatal protests against foreigners in the country.\u00a0 This past Friday, April 1, a United Nations mission in the town of Mazar-i-Sharif was invaded by protesters.\u00a0 Seven UN staff members were killed, making this the deadliest attack on the UN in Afghanistan since the beginning of hostilities.\u00a0 The violence continued Saturday<\/a> in Kandahar where 10 people were killed and 83 injured, and also in Kabul where a NATO compound was hit by a suicide attack.\u00a0 Many were shot, though some reports state that others had been beaten and stoned.\u00a0 The protesters claim that the attacks are in response to the Koran burnings that took place in Florida under Pastor Terry Jones. \u00a0Although the Koran burnings had largely gone unnoticed by most Afghanis, protests erupted following criticism and a call for justice from Hamid Karzai on Friday. They are projecting their frustration onto any foreigners within their cities.\u00a0 Many have been seen carrying Taliban flags and shouting anti-American\/pro-Taliban slogans.\u00a0 However, the Taliban denies any role in the violent protests.\u00a0 The UN stated that this will not change their activities in Afghanistan, and President Obama has denounced religious intolerance as well as the wanton destruction of human lives.\u00a0 The attacks come at a completely inopportune moment as the country readies for a security hand-over to Afghan troops.\u00a0 This is certainly a tragedy in the wake of what could have been a peaceful transition.\u00a0 In an interview this past weekend, Terry Jones remained defiant and stood by his actions.\u00a0 \u00a0Religious intolerance will not win wars.\u00a0 Religious intolerance is in fact what created this situation beginning with the events of September 11, 2001.\u00a0 There is blame on both ends as the burning of any holy text is an extreme of human intolerance and vengeance-seeking through violence is similarly unacceptable.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the delicate balance of diplomacy and military force will have to continue amid such hatred.\u00a0 One may only hope that intolerable and undignified external actors will allow the process to move forward as it will.<\/p>\n

Photo Credit:\u00a0 Flickr, Maks Karochkin<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An area considered a critical bastion of security in Afghanistan is experiencing violent and fatal protests against foreigners in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/journalofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}