Afghanistan: A Country, Not a War ( by David Swanson)

[jakeXT]

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- In honor of April 4, 1967, and April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out against war and when he was killed, I spent my first full day in Afghanistan on April 4, 2011, avoiding violence and discussing nonviolent activism with those practicing it here.

The previous night I had spoken with a number of foreign aid and development workers here in Kabul, all of whom were upset, both at Afghans who in recent days had killed workers like themselves and at a preacher in Florida whose burning of a Koran had enraged Taliban types from a safe distance. Attacks in multiple cities on April 1st and 2nd looked planned and coordinated. April 3rd saw a nonviolent protest in Jalalabad, where Badshah Khan, the great nonviolence leader of the past century, is buried.

They haven't heard over here about U.S. bigots' fantasy of President Obama's secret Muslim identity. He bombs them and permits the burning of Korans, so they burn him and the Floridian preacher in effigy.

April 4th saw the murder of two U.S. soldiers by an Afghan policeman in the north, and smaller protests in other cities. But the United Nations decided not to evacuate, as had been quietly under consideration. And in Kabul, where President Karzai had ordered the use of force against any demonstration with the "potential for violence," nothing was reported in the news or observed by me on the 4th.

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http://davidswanson.org/content/afghanistan-country-not-war