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Protestors Riot After Karzai Ousts Governor

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 12, 2004; 1:52 PM

HERAT, Afghanistan, Sept. 12 -- While the newly named provincial governor was welcomed at an ornate palace ceremony in this remote western city Sunday, angry mobs loyal to the ousted governor set fire to half a dozen international aid compounds, looted their contents and stoned national army troops sent to keep order.

By nightfall, emergency room doctors said, between 3 and 10 people had died and at least 45 had been injured, mostly from shrapnel and bullet wounds.

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Flames and smoke still rose from several charred aid facilities, gunfire crackled sporadically and military helicopters circled the urban sky. Officials said most foreign staffers from United Nations and aid agencies had taken refuge in bunkers or been taken to safety at a U.S. military compound outside the city.

Ismail Khan, the former longtime governor of Herat Province and a powerful Islamic militia leader, remained secluded in his home here while his replacement, Sayeed Mohammed Khairkhwa, arrived on a special flight from Kabul, the capital 370 miles east, and was greeted by several hundred local officials and tribal elders.

Khairkhwa was appointed Saturday by President Hamid Karzai, who simultaneously offered Khan a new post as minister of mines and industry. Officials called the switch an effort to bring peace and stability to the region following a month of sporadic violent clashes between forces loyal to Khan, an ethnic Tajik, and troops from a rival ethnic Pashtun militia leader.

Mir Abdul Khaliq, the deputy governor of Herat, said at the welcoming ceremony that Khan had met with him and other officials in his home Saturday night, and that he had instructed them to support the government's decision and greet Khairkhwa at the airport.

But news of Khan's abrupt removal enraged his supporters in this wealthy and strategically important city near the border with Iran. Beginning Saturday night, crowds roamed the streets, throwing stones at national army troops and police and shouting slogans against Karzai and the United States.

On Sunday, as a delegation of officials from Kabul flew here to install Khairkhwa in the governor's palace that has been occupied by Khan for much of the last 25 years, hundreds of Khan loyalists again took to the streets, attacking a number of U.N. offices and other international agencies despite efforts by national troops and police to stop their rampage.

Witnesses and soldiers said the mobs broke into offices of the U.N. political mission, UNICEF, the U.N. refugee agency, the World Health Organization, the International Migration Organization, and the U.N. anti-drug office, all located within several blocks of each other.

They said the demonstrators set buildings and vehicles on fire, smashed furniture and stole equipment. They also ransacked the local office of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

At the World Health Organization compound Saturday evening, soldiers stood guard while flames still burned in the charred and windowless main building. Two utility vehicles with U.N. license plates sat smashed and blackened in the yard, while hundreds of medicine bottles and other supplies lay scattered on the ground.

Across the street, the compound of the International Migration Organization, which assists refugees, was also destroyed. Several buildings were badly charred by fire and surrounded by burned and smashed vehicles.

"These people were very excited and shouting. . . They broke in and filled cans with gasoline and threw them," said a Gul Mohammed, 27, a national army soldier guarding the abandoned facility. "We told them we are Muslims and Afghans and we are here to protect the city, but they wouldn't listen. We did not have orders to shoot, or many of them would have been killed."


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