Yesterday some 500 university students gathered in Jalalabad, the capital of Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, to protest the likely execution of an Afghan soldier convicted of murdering five NATO troops. The soldier’s appeal was rejected by an Afghan court last week and he is said to be among a group of convicts soon to be executed by Afghan authorities.
According to AFP, the students blocked the main road leading to Kabul, chanted anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans, and burned US and Israeli flags in protest against the recent deaths of Palestinians in Gaza in clashes between the Israeli military and Gaza-based insurgent groups. The students also called on the NDS, Afghanistan’s intelligence service, to prevent the execution. They blamed the NDS for the soldier’s arrest, Khaama Press reported, and threatened further protests if their demands were not met by the Afghan government.
“We demand the president withdraw a decree that approves the execution of Abdul Sabor, the soldier who is accused of killing five French troops,” the students said in a statement. They also called for a halt to the execution of Taliban prisoners by the Afghan government. Within the past week, the government has executed 14 death row prisoners, some of whom were Taliban, AFP reported.
One of the protesters, Inayatullah, warned that the execution of Sabor would lead to an uprising, according to Pajhwok Afghan News. The students, said to be from the Education Faculty, threatened to close Nangarhar University if Sabor is not reprieved.
They also demanded that a US soldier accused of killing 18 civilians in Kandahar be “brought to justice,” Pajhwok reported. US Army Sergeant Robert Bales is currently awaiting results of a pretrial inquiry in a US military court on charges of killing 17 Afghan civilians; prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
On Jan. 20, Sabor, a soldier with the Afghan National Army in the eastern province of Kapisa, turned his gun on a group of French soldiers as they jogged on their base, killing four outright and wounding 15 others. According to AFP, a fifth French soldier later died of his wounds. Sabor was apprehended the day of the shooting. The attack prompted France to accelerate its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The French combat mission in Kapisa ended last week.
On July 17, a military court sentenced him to death by hanging.
Sabor is the first Afghan to be convicted of a green-on-blue, or insider, attack on Coalition troops by Afghan forces. Given the prevalence of such attacks in recent years — with 42 attacks so far this year alone, resulting in 60 Coalition deaths — yesterday’s protest in Jalalabad does not bode well for the Afghan system of justice or the safety of Coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.
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10 Comments
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One of the protesters, Inayatullah, warned that the execution of Sabor would lead to an uprising, according to Pajhwok Afghan News. The students, said to be from the Education Faculty, threatened to close Nangarhar University if Sabor is not reprieved.
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Rather than being allowed to disrupt the lives of other students, the protestors should be expelled and immediately inducted into the ANA to fight the Taliban.
I’m beginning to think that the fool isn’t the illiterate, backwards, fundamentalist wacks. They are who they are. The fools are those of us who continue to think they’re redeemable.
Just let them go back to their squalor and uneducated cavedom.
“One of the protesters, Inayatullah, warned that the execution of Sabor would lead to an uprising, according to Pajhwok Afghan News. The students, said to be from the Education Faculty, threatened to close Nangarhar University if Sabor is not reprieved.”
The Taliban will close the university when they regain power so the students can skip that chore. @bard207 and Ghost Soldier: You are both so correct. After the Taliban regain power its good bye university, hello Tenth Century.
so who is ‘behind’ the protesters?
Its time to leave these primitive animals to themselves. Nothing could bring Afgan into the modern world, they don’t want it (except when it involves weapons).
Wonder what these students were majoring in to have so much free time and not value their education. Might be a good idea to cut back some departments
Let the folks fight amongst themselves as they’ve been doing for thousands of years. We should have pulled out of Afghanistan the moment we stopped delivering via B-52’s and should never have been in Iraq.
Why not ask the Afghan goverment to reprieve Abdul Sabor and at the same time ask that the US reprieve US Army Sergeant Robert Bales for his crimes. Lets see what kind of reaction we get then.
Students ? I doubt they’re doing this on their own if they are in fact even students at all. Looking at the attack on Jalalabad today one would have to conclude that they were serious about consequences. Here we go again……..
I can see the resentment against the brave Afghan people among the posters here. Who is to blame here? Of course the transgressing occupying US and its allies. Lets be honest with ourselves and say what would you do if Afghanistan sent its troops to occupy America? What would be your response? They are simply rejecting the Western values and their occupation of the Afghan land. The execution of these prisoners shows the desperation of the puppet Afghan government and their master NATO forces. They have lost it!
You are talking so foul of the Afghan people claiming they would plunge back to 10th C if the Americans leave. It is a false assumption. If Afghans are left without foreign interference in their political matters, they sure would be on their feet in no time.