Other agendas thrive in furor over cartoons

KABUL, Afghanistan – Like tens of thousands of protesters this week, the crowd that gathered Wednesday in the southern Afghan town of Qalat came to speak out against cartoons in European newspapers mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

But the protest soon took a different direction. Afghan demonstrators began chanting against the hiring of Pakistanis to do reconstruction work.

Pakistanis in the crowd began chanting against the United States and tried to force their way into a U.S. military base. When the crowd encountered Afghan security forces, shots were fired. Four protesters were killed, and more than 12 people were injured.

"They forgot all about the cartoons," said Gulab Shah Alikheil, the regional governor's spokesman.

Furor over the caricatures of Islam's most revered figure may have triggered the demonstrations by Muslims worldwide during the past week. But as the protests escalate, they are morphing into an opportunity for individuals, groups and governments to push agendas that often have little or nothing to do with defending Islam.

Rallies supposedly held for religious reasons have become chances to vent economic frustrations, settle local scores or gain political leverage.

Mulwi Sayed Imam Mutawali, deputy head of a religious council in the Afghan city of Kandahar, said his council initially supported the protests but has decided to demand they be stopped because they have been hijacked by people with ulterior motives. At least 10 people have been killed in Afghan protests in the past three days.

The list of suspected ringleaders in Afghanistan is long, ranging from the Taliban to local militia commanders and former governors.

Afghanistan is not the only place where motives are in question. Syria was widely believed to be behind weekend protests that resulted in the burning of the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. In Lebanon, where the Danish Embassy burned a day later and Christian landmarks were targeted in violence, local media reported that Syrian agents brought protesters in on buses to stir up trouble.

In Tehran, demonstrators pelted the British Embassy with stones Wednesday. Protesters carried placards condemning the cartoons as well as London's role in referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program.

"Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes and the world ought to call them on it," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.

Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, dismissed Rice's comments, telling CNN it was the U.S.-led military presence in Iraq and the Israeli presence in Palestinian lands that was "fueling anti-Western sentiment."

Sarkis Naoum, a columnist for Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, said interest groups in Lebanon also had incentive to see protests spin out of control.

"The local ones would like to be back as rulers of the country. And certain regional powers here would like to exert the same influence — or more — than they had before," he said by telephone from Beirut.

In Indonesia, the Islamic Defenders Front, a radical Muslim organization, said the cartoons have made organizing easy.

"The moment has unified us," boasted the group's East Java chairman, Habib Abdurrahman Bahlaida. "The West had a bad plan to pull Muslims apart. Instead they are pulling us together." The group, which claims 5. million members, attacked the Danish and U.S. consulates in the Indonesian city of Surabaya on Monday.

In Pakistan, too, conservative Muslim groups appeared to be using the uproar over the cartoons to gain leverage. In Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier province, several thousand people rallied Tuesday in a protest led by the provincial government, headed by radical religious parties.

Rifaat Hussain, a Pakistani academic who is executive director of the Sri Lanka-based Regional Center for Strategic Studies, said the cartoons are being used as a tool to apply pressure on Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Afghanistan has been the scene of especially violent demonstrations. In the western city of Herat, where about 8,000 protesters gathered Tuesday, authorities suspect Ismail Khan, a former governor bitter about his removal from office. In the northern city of Maymana, a local commander who has lost power since NATO troops arrived was believed to be behind protests Tuesday in which three people died as they attempted to storm an alliance base.

"The warlords are looking for opportunities," said Nader Nadery, leader of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. "And this is a good opportunity to motivate people."

Post correspondent Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta, Indonesia, and special correspondents Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, and Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report.