KABUL, Afghanistan — After five days of anti-American protests that left 14 people dead, Afghan officials charged Saturday that outside forces had hijacked many of the demonstrations in a bid to destabilize the government.
The officials said anti-government factions used the protests, which erupted over a report that Americans at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba had desecrated the Koran, to incite people already leery of U.S. policies in Afghanistan.
"Foreign hands are trying to disturb our parliamentary elections and are against the strengthening of the peace process," President Hamid Karzai told reporters Saturday.
Karzai did not specify which country or countries he believed the instigators were from, but the Ministry of Defense said it could not rule out involvement by Taliban or Al Qaeda militants.
Many Afghan officials accuse Pakistan, which had backed the Taliban government, of allowing Taliban militants to operate along the border with Afghanistan. But Pakistan says it is cracking down in those areas.
The anti-American protests spanned more than 12 provinces and were the worst the country has seen since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Haji Din Mohammed, the governor of Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, said there were "signs that the protests in some of the provinces were planned by anti-government groups that wanted to create chaos and violence in the name of the protesters."
Haji Asadullah Khalid, the governor of Ghazni province, where one police officer and three protesters were killed during riots Friday, blamed the unrest on the forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade warlord who is wanted by the U.S. government for planning attacks on American troops and the Afghan government.
Hekmatyar is believed to be hiding in northern Pakistan, and his loyalists are active in several southern provinces, including Lowgar, Wardak and Nangarhar -- all of which experienced violent demonstrations last week.
"Hekmatyar's forces are active in some of the key provinces that have had violent protests," the Ghazni governor said.
The protests began Tuesday in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. Students at the Nangarhar University medical school were angered by a report in Newsweek magazine that said U.S. interrogators at the Guantanamo detention center had desecrated the Koran, Islam's holy book, by placing it on toilets, and in one case, by flushing a Koran down the toilet in an attempt to demoralize detainees.
