It’s bad enough that the U.S. military burned — it says accidentally — Korans in Afghanistan. But if that symbolism wasn’t already a setback to the war effort, the NATO command in Afghanistan confirms that the destruction of an unknown number of holy Islamic books occurred at the military’s massive wartime prison.
The Detention Facility at Parwan, the prison on the outskirts of Bagram Air Field was the locale for the recent Koran destructions, according to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Afghans and human rights workers already accuse the U.S. of hosting a secret torture chamber at the Parwan jail, a charge the U.S. denies.
“We can tell you for now these were religious materials that were gathered up at the Detention Facility in Parwan and it was inadvertently given to troops for burning,” emails Australian Navy Lt. L.M. Rago, an ISAF spokeswoman. “How and why this happened is part of the investigation that General Allen quickly directed this morning.”
Gen. John Allen, the commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan, issued a statement early Tuesday morning apologizing for the destruction of the Korans. “We are thoroughly investigating the incident and we are taking steps to ensure this does not ever happen again,” Allen said. “I assure you … I promise you … this was NOT intentional in any way.”
The account from the U.S. military so far is that Korans and other Islamic religious material were accidentally included in boxes of random material like furniture slated for destruction at a “burn pit” —fire pits for the incineration of refuse — at Bagram. Afghan employees of the base alerted military officials that the Korans were headed for the fire, pausing the incineration. It’s unclear why holy books were included in the piles of trash headed for the burn pit, but ISAF says it was a mix-up it’ll fix.
But the story already circulated far enough throughout Afghanistan that crowds threw stones on the outskirts of one of the entrance checkpoints to the big Bagram base, about an hour’s drive from Kabul. Judging from the photos of the riots, the angry crowds weren’t actually near the populated parts of the base.
After 10 years of war, it’s mystifying how Korans would have been anywhere near a destruction pit. Afghans rioted in Mazar-e-Sharif last year when a Florida pastor set the Islamic holy book ablaze, and did the same years ago after a Newsweek report of Koran desecrations at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Now a different detention center, this time on Afghan soil, hosted the desecration, however inadvertent it may have been. Afghan President Hamid Karzai already wants the coalition to turn over the Parwan jail to Afghan control, as the U.S. once promised to do by January 2012 — before it decided to keep Parwan for itself, and double the jail’s population. Allen has invited Karzai’s deputies to take part in the Koran investigation — possibly out of a recognition that the Afghans won’t host the U.S. if troops keep burning their holy books, especially at their wartime jails. VIDEO
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