Afghan Investigators: US Quran Burning ‘Intentional’

US Burned 'Hundreds' of Religious Texts

by Jason Ditz, March 05, 2012

In the first public comments from a member of the Afghan investigation team, Maulvi Khaliqdad says that the team believes the US burning of Qurans late last month was “intentional.”

Khaliqdad went on to say that it would have been plausible for the US to claim it was a “mistake” if personnel had only burned one or two copies of the Quran but that everybody involved knew about it and that there were “hundreds of such books” involved in the organized mass book burning.

Western officials say that there were a number of “unintentional mistakes” behind the burnings, and the finger of blame is being pointed squarely at the five unnamed soldiers that the military says were responsible, with promises that they could theoretically face some sort of “reprimand.”

All this points once again to the Obama Administration and NATO not taking the incident nearly so seriously as the Afghan public. From the rehearsed “apology” to NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s praise of NATO troops for not butchering Afghan protesters, the sentiment seems to be that this will simply blow over given enough time.

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