Meanwhile in Afghanistan

A series of avoidable mistakes led to the burning of Quran copies at a US base in Afghanistan, and at least five US military personnel involved may face a disciplinary hearing over the issue, a leaked report on the incident shows.

One Western official, speaking to the Associated Press news agency on condition of anonymity, said that the joint investigation by senior Afghan and US military officials has determined that there was no intent to desecrate the Muslim holy book.

  alJazeera

No? Then why the possibility of disciplinary action?

[An] Afghan committee investigating the incident has rejected apologies from the US, saying that those responsible must be tried publically in Afghanistan.

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A more formal US military investigation is still weeks away from completion.

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"Some of those people are of fairly high military rank, and they're going to end up being discplined, or the recommendations would be that they would be discplined for failing to follow procedure. Investigators will also end up punishing people if they feel that they haven't entirely honest with them during the initial investigation," Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith reported from Kabul.

So...the investigation has determined no intent but there is still an investigation that could possibly determine there was some dishonesty.

The claim is that officials decided books were being used to pass messages, and so they collected and boxed the items for disposal. Some lowly soldiers who didn't know what was actually in the boxes tossed them on the fire.

I can believe that. Sounds like typical Army to me. On the other hand, the people doing the collecting and boxing certainly knew what they were putting in the boxes, and they could have clearly separated the Korans.

Whether we think it's rational to be upset about the burning of a book is unimportant. What is important is that we are cavalier about the impact our actions have and don't take care to avoid doing things that we know will have a negative impact.

Afghanistan's senior religious leaders demanded on Friday that those involved in the incident be put on public trial and punished.

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They also called on the US to end night searches and to hand over prisons to Afghan control. The religious leaders said the books would never have been burned if Afghan officials had been in charge of the facility.

Control over detainees and night raids are the two most contentious issues in a strategic partnership document that the US and Afghanistan are currently negotiating.

[The] US has committed a series of serious missteps which has undermined their efforts to win over the Afghan people.

Last year, the leader of a 12 soldier "kill team" was given a life sentence by a US military court.

Prosecutors said Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs hunted innocent Afghans “for sport”, and cut off body parts for trophies. He then posed for pictures with the corpses.

Then there was the four Marines who videotaped themselves urinating on the bodies of the dead Afghans and the US sniper unit which happily posed in front of a Nazi SS banner.

  There was the US combat outpost nicknamed Aryan.

  And earlier this year, the British Ministry of Defence confirmed it was investigating reports that two ten year old children, a boy and a girl, were abused by UK troops.

Military night raids that appall the cultural sensitivities of most Afghans, continue despite the appeals from President Hamid Karzai to stop as it undermines the redevelopment efforts of NATO soldiers.

But even these incidents have not provoked the widespread and deep anger of the discovery of the burning of Quran copies at the US-dominated Bagram airbase.

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The US state department insists the protests have been hijacked by extremists who see this as a convenient issue to rally support.

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The Americans seemed overwhelmed by the reaction, unable to get on top of events, or put together a response which would quell the violence.

Walking around the shopping malls and the international restaurants in Kabul, it is perhaps easy to forget that this is, outside the capital, a deeply conservative country.

And for many, the burning of the holy book stands out as a moment, which eleven years after the invasion, demonstrates America still doesn’t understand the deeply held beliefs and traditions in Afghanistan.

It doesn’t matter, say my Muslim friends in the country, that the proper way to dispose of a damaged Quran is to burn it.

This was disrespectful.

  alJazeera

Well, there you go. I did not know that the proper way to dispose of the book is to burn it. Apparently there is a respectful way and a disrespectful way to burn it, and we managed the disrespectful way. But, what do Americans know about respect? Cut us some slack.

America has apologised for the incident and the US commander, General John Allen, has ordered all military personnel in the country undergo 10 days of sensitivity training on the handling of religious materials.

I'm sure that will take care of the matter.

Every day 400 Afghans become internally displaced, according to Amnesty International. At that rate, more than 2,500 Afghans were left homeless in the week of violent protests that swept the country recently over the burning of copies of the Quran at the US-led Bagram airbase.

They joined the ranks of internally displaced people (IDPs), already crowding makeshift camps that dot Afghanistan’s urban centres.

"It was incredible to see how people young and old could survive such poverty, destruction and filth" said Fatima Popal, an aid worker with the Kabul-based Aschiana Foundation, after visiting some of the camps during Afghanistan's harsh winter that has already claimed 40 lives this year.

Among the hapless crowds, Popal saw children without shoes, socks or jackets walking to tattered and worn tents that provided little or no protection against the biting cold.

But yet, the squalid camps are seen as the last refuge by Afghans fleeing violence back home, amid an unremitting conflict in which the principal actors are the Taliban and NATO-led troops.

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Many - locals and war lords - have their eyes set on grabbing lands the IDPs occupy and those who had fled homes to seek refuge in urban centres find themselves engulfed in fresh hostility.

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By Amnesty's estimates, the number of IDPs touched 500,000 last month - a figure that is certain to swell further.

Once in the camps, aid agencies say the inhabitants are made to fend for themselves, with the government virtually forsaking those who were forced to flee their homes.

  alJazeera

We don't need to worry about these people. They don't have guns.