The protests over the desecration of Korans in Afghanistan spread like wildfire today, and the Guardian reports at least seven deaths:

Seven people have been killed in Afghanistan as violence spread across the country in a second day of protests against the burning of copies of the Qur’an by foreign troops.

In Kabul an enraged crowd armed with stones and petrol bombs attacked a military base and a nearby compound housing foreign workers, shouting “Death to America”.

Police fired into the air and used water cannon to try to control the protesters; security guards in the compound also used their rifles.

Eleven men were taken to hospital in the capital, Kabul, with gunshot wounds and one later died from his injuries, said Kabir Amiri, spokesman for the city’s hospitals.

Four others were shot dead when police opened fire on protests in Parwan province, where authorities said demonstrations had become infiltrated by insurgents and extremely destructive. Thirteen were injured. Two others were killed at protests in Jalalabad and central Logar province.

This definitely seems like a sustainable occupation. Incidentally, 20 people died in April 2011, including 7 UN workers, when nutjob pastor Terry Jones reportedly burned Korans in Florida. Those protests lasted three days. We’re in day two.

Big Tent Democrat chalks this up to incompetence, and there’s a fair argument for that. It’s one thing if books just got mixed up with other papers, given that the standard for all waste on bases in Afghanistan is incineration. But it looks like the authorities took away the Korans from Afghan prisoners because they thought them dangerous:

Parwan is home to the sprawling Bagram airbase, where foreign troops sent religious documents, including copies of the Qur’an, for incineration on Monday evening.

The books were spotted by Afghan workers, who extinguished the flames and left with some of the damaged Qur’ans, which had been taken from prisoners in a detention centre on the base.

A military official, who asked not to be named, said the books had been removed from the jail library because some had inscriptions added that appeared to be being used to “facilitate extremist communications”, or were extremist “in and of themselves”.

You might as well burn every single book in the prison library and every scrap of paper, then. The fact of them being Korans has nothing to do with the communication aspect. And considering past incidents, the consequences of burning Korans should have been entirely clear. As for “extremist in and of themselves,” with military officials terming the Islamic holy book that way, is it any wonder why Americans are seen as a malevolent force inside that country?

Afghan security officials claimed that “militants” were intermixing with the protesters, necessitating their response that killed several people. Whether or not that’s true, the fact is that you’re setting up almost an Arab spring situation when the police shoot protesters. Afghanistan is unstable enough.

The other point is that these protests are part of a larger rage against occupation. Most of the prisoners who had their Korans taken from them got to the prison from night raids. The loss of sovereignty on the part of the Afghan people is palpable. And on top of these, you see these insults. One protester told Reuters, “When the Americans insult us to this degree, we will join the insurgents.”