U.S. massacre generates protests

New York WW photo: John Catalinotto

Every day is a bad day for the people of Afghanistan, living under U.S. military occupation. But March 11 was a terrible day beyond description. That’s when an unknown number of U.S. soldiers entered villages near a U.S. base in Kandahar in the wee hours of the morning and massacred 16 people, most of them women and children.

The reaction around the world was at first numbness and then a surge of anger against the colonial war that had produced such a vile and cowardly attack.

Detroit WW photo: Cheryl LaBash

In the United States, the International Action Center and Workers World Party went to Times Square in New York on March 15 to call for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In Milwaukee, young people got out their “Stop genocide in Afghanistan” banners and took to the streets. In Detroit, a beleaguered city whose workers have been sucked dry by the auto companies and mortgage banks, passing buses, cabs and cars honked in support of a demonstration demanding “U.S. out of Afghanistan.”

Some 50 people demonstrated outside Obama campaign headquarters in Oakland, Calif. A vigil was held in Berkeley, Calif.

Milwaukee WW photo: Bryan G. Pfeifer

A huge protest in Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan demanded that the soldiers involved be tried in the country where they had committed these unspeakable crimes and shouted “Death to America!”

Other protests were held in Toronto, Canada, and Karachi, Pakistan.