Riots and protests that have spread from Jalalabad to the Afghan capital in the wake of a report that US interrogators had desecrated the Koran have taken a political turn, with students demanding the government reject US intentions to create a permanent military presence there.

The biggest anti-US protests since the fall of the Taliban are spreading in Afghanistan, kindled by an unconfirmed report that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, desecrated the Muslim holy book, the Koran, to insult Muslim detainees. Several hundred students protested on Thursday in the Afghan capital Kabul. The unrest followed a 2,000-strong protest on Tuesday and riots on Wednesday in Jalalabad, in which four people were killed and the Pakistani consulate, foreign aid agencies, UN buildings, and diplomatic missions were attacked. The riots were triggered by a Newsweek magazine report that said US investigators probing abuse at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay had discovered that interrogators "had placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case, flushed a holy book down the toilet". Desecrating the Koran is punishable by execution in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. On Thursday, protests spread to other districts in eastern Afghanistan, as well as to the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Quetta, close to the Afghan border. Police shot dead two more protestors in Jalalabad and one in the Wardak, a province that borders Kabul. The protesters chanted "Death to America" and called for assurances that the US would not maintain a long-term presence in Afghanistan.

Threatening Afghanistan's independence - Beyond the current desecration outrage, the students in Kabul were also engaged in other political issues, demanding that the Afghan government deny permanent military bases to the US. They said the creation of permanent US military bases would threaten the independence of Afghanistan. The demands come only days after US-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai got green light from more than 1,000 tribal elders and officials to go ahead with a partnership with the US that would most likely include the creation of permanent US military bases in the country. Putting a new spin on the protests, Karzai used the riots in Jalalabad on Wednesday to justify a permanent US presence, saying that the violence illustrated Afghanistan's inability to deal with security threats on its own. Karzai commented on the events during a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, RFE/RL reported. "The [protest] event this morning shows two things," he said. "One, that Afghanistan is a democratic state. Two, that Afghanistan, as [a] democratic state, is not yet ready with institutions to handle [the protest]." The specifically anti-American nature of the protests could jeopardize plans in Kabul and Washington to use Afghanistan as a permanent base for increasing US influence in Central Asia and the Middle East, containing Russian and Chinese influence in the region, and encircling Iran.

Still a foregone conclusion? - The US has long-term plans for Afghanistan, and until this week, the establishment of permanent US military bases in the country seemed more or less a foregone conclusion, with few obvious obstacles. The plans got a new boost in mid-February when US Senator John McCain visited Kabul and called for "joint military permanent bases" in Afghanistan, saying those bases would be "for the good of the American people, because of the long-term security interests we have in the region". Then, in mid-March, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers told reporters in Kabul that the US Defense Department was studying the feasibility of such bases. In early April, Afghan Defense Minister General Abdul Rahim Wardak said Afghanistan was also seeking "enduring arrangements" with the US that could include permanent air bases or pre-positioned military equipment to be used by rapidly deployed US military forces in a crisis. Svante Cornell, deputy director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, told ISN Security Watch that the Pentagon was seeking "forward bases that can be small in troop size but quickly be able to accommodate larger numbers". In a sign that work on "enduring arrangements" is indeed progressing, the US military announced on 28 March that it was spending US$83 million on its two main air bases in Afghanistan, Bagram Air Base north of Kabul and Kandahar Air Field in the south of the country. When US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on 13 April, both he and Karzai were non-committal about the bases issue, although it is believed they discussed the issue. Karzai told reporters he would ask US President George Bush for long-term security protection for his country - without specifying whether this would involve permanent bases. But Michael Shaikh, a Kabul-based analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank, told ISN Security Watch that Karzai did in fact ask Rumsfeld to set up permanent US military bases in his country.

Strategic reach
The US is keen to have a military presence in Afghanistan that can secure its long-term interests in the region. "It's not just Iran or drugs or something concrete and immediate - the goal seems to be strategic and long-term," Cornell says. For the future, the US envisages a wider area where military operations will be staged at short notice, stretching from North Africa to Southeast Asia - including Central and South Asia. "Strategic reach is the issue," says Cornell. As such, Afghanistan is only part of a mosaic of US forward bases. The US already operates bases at Qarshi Khanabad Air Field in Uzbekistan and at Manas International Airport in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. And although the US has not officially requested permanent bases in those two Central Asian nations, Cornell says it is unlikely that the bases would be abandoned any time soon. "It's pretty nice to have a base near the Chinese border!" Cornell says. After his visit to Afghanistan, Rumsfeld did indeed drop by Bishkek to get assurances from the post-revolutionary leadership that the US presence at Manas would not be jeopardized. Shaikh agrees that containing China - and a Russia that is increasingly active in Central Asia - is a major factor.

Closing in on Iran
Another important country in the forward bases strategy is Azerbaijan. Cornell notes that at least once a year, Rumsfeld visits the country, which - like Afghanistan - can be used by the US to apply pressure on Iran. "The US wants to put pressure on Iran," says Shaikh. A long-term US presence in Azerbaijan and Afghanistan would all but close the US circle around the Islamic Republic. It is already present in Iraq and has warships in the Persian Gulf. And it seems to have a small but important foothold in Pakistan as well. Prominent US journalist Seymour Hersh in January wrote in the New Yorker magazine that US special forces were conducting reconnaissance missions in Iran from - and with the help of - Pakistan. The US denied the claims, but similar reports abound. Anonymous security sources in both Afghanistan and Pakistan told ISN Security Watch that CIA agents and US special forces were present in the western Pakistani province of Balochistan, which borders Iran. A Pakistani and a British journalist who had been investigating a possible US presence near the Iranian border told ISN Security Watch they had been told of a small US military base on the Pakistani coastal town of Jiwani, close to the Iranian border. But those reports could not be independently confirmed. "US special forces are sometimes cruising around in Balochistan," says Shaikh. And if the US is indeed planning covert operations against Iran, the Shindand Air Base in western Afghanistan, which is only some 100 kilometers from the Iranian border, is likely to play an important role, Shaikh says.

What's in it for Kabul?
The establishment of permanent US military bases in Afghanistan is likely to have detrimental effects for Afghan-Iranian relations. One Western diplomat in Afghanistan told ISN Security Watch that under such a scenario, Iran in might use its considerable influence in western Afghanistan to the detriment of the US. But the US-backed Afghan government seems to be prepared to take that risk. And indeed, until this week, there was broad-based political support for a long-term US presence in the country. Shaikh notes that apart from the Taliban and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - both of whom are fighting to overthrow Karzai's government - there has been remarkable little opposition to the US presence, at least not until the reports of US interrogators desecrating the Muslim holy book. Shaikh says the authorities in Kabul fear that if US forces leave the area, the Taliban will return in the face of a weak Afghan National Army. And, clearly, the Taliban are still a threat. While US military officials say the Taliban has been severely weakened if not crushed, thanks to US-Afghan military operations to root them out and to the co-opting of some 50 high-ranking Taliban leaders into Karzai's government, recent attacks prove the contrary. Nick Downie of the Afghanistan NGO Security Office in Kabul says the attempt to include Taliban leaders in the government has made "no difference at all" to the intensity of the insurgency. And a recent suicide bombing at an internet café was the first such attack by the Taliban after one of its spokesmen had warned that the group would focus on suicide missions to achieve maximum results with minimum casualties for itself. Downie says the tactic works. If the Taliban manage to kill one foreigner, the entire region's aid organizations immediately evacuate, he says. The movement now might seek to take advantage of the anti-US protests. Afghan officials have already suggested that opponents of the US-backed government may have coordinated the violence. Karzai also believes the various warlords are likely to be more compliant as long as the US military is around. He seems to think that the US presence puts Kabul in a stronger position vis-à-vis its neighbor Pakistan in the disputes - particularly about border delimitation - that still abound.

Support for US bases
Observers believe that permanent US military bases could be established shortly after Afghanistan's parliamentary elections in September. The new parliament would have to approve the bases. Until recently, few analysts had expected any hitches in that process because it could count on broad-based political support. But this week's protests could signal problems ahead. Observers believe that if the opposition - led by Yunus Qanuni, the Tajik politician who lost the presidency to Karzai in October last year - could make gains in September's poll from anti-US sentiments by vocally opposing permanent US military bases in Afghanistan. "It's quite clear that Karzai's opponents will use the issue against him in the parliamentary elections," Wadir Safi, a professor and a cabinet minister during the 1980s, told Reuters. In late April, before the riots, Qanuni indicated tacit support for the US presence in Afghanistan in an interview with the Pajhwok Afghan News agency. "Afghanistan must forge robust relations with […] the United States," he said, but added that "under the constitution, any decision on permanent US bases in Afghanistan must be taken by Parliament, not the Presidency." But the unexpected development of public anti-US sentiments in the wake of the desecration report could very well provide Qanuni with the ammunition he needs for a September shakeup in Kabul that could hinder Washington's plans for a deeper strategic relationship with Afghanistan.

Daan van der Schriek is ISN Security Watch's correspondent in Kabul.