KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Hundreds of angry protesters in Afghanistan's capital burned an effigy of President Obama on Sunday, acting on rumors that American troops had desecrated the Koran.
U.S. military officials emphatically denied that any copies of the Muslim holy book had been mishandled, and they accused the Taliban of spreading falsehoods to incite hatred against Western forces.
The protest -- reminiscent of similar demonstrations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world in recent years -- showed how easily passions involving religious sensitivities can be stirred up even with a dearth of evidence.
The incident also pointed to a strong undercurrent of anti-American sentiment at a politically fraught time in Afghanistan, less than two weeks before a runoff to settle a divisive, fraud-tainted presidential election. The Nov. 7 face-off between President Hamid Karzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah was agreed to only after heavy U.S. pressure on Karzai to accept the results of an international audit. The investigators found that as many as one-third of the ballots cast for Karzai in the Aug. 20 election were fraudulent. That put the Afghan leader below the threshold of victory, 50%, and made a runoff necessary.
On Sunday morning U.S. political talk shows, both candidates ruled out a power-sharing agreement to avoid the runoff. Against this political backdrop, the Koran protest reflected a rising religious conservatism even among some members of Afghanistan's educated elite, such as the university students who made up most of the crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators.
Police fired warning shots into the air when the demonstrators marched from Kabul University toward parliament, but no injuries were reported.
Several marchers insisted they were certain that a Koran had been desecrated by U.S. troops in Wardak province, just outside the capital, even if they could not provide particulars of the incident, such as when it was believed to have taken place.
"Muslims were disrespected!" said Zabiullah Khalil, an engineering student. "The foreigners shot the Koran, and then they burned it. They should be tried for this."
The demonstration, like many in the capital, had a heartfelt yet orchestrated feel to it. Khalil, like a number of other participants, expressed broad anger at the United States in connection with the election and its disputed aftermath.
