Pat Dollard

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Demonstrators hold portraits of slain men during an anti-Taliban protest in Laghman Province, Afghanistan, yesterday.

AP, KABUL
Sunday, Oct 26, 2008

More than 1,000 Pashtun demonstrators shouted anti-Taliban slogans in eastern Afghanistan to protest the slayings this week of 26 young men from their community by militants in the south.

The unprecedented demonstration Friday in Laghman Province was one of the largest anti-Taliban gatherings since the fall of the hardline Islamist regime following the US invasion after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

On Sunday, Taliban militants stopped a bus in southern Kandahar Province’s Maiwand district, a militant-controlled area, and killed 26 of the passengers — beheading at least six of them.

A Taliban spokesman said the men were targeted because they were members of Afghan security forces.

But Afghan officials disputed that any soldiers were on the bus, saying the Taliban insurgents had killed innocent civilians who were on their way to find jobs in neighboring Iran.

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans cross illegally into Iran every year, seeking jobs and refuge.

Protesters from Laghman’s Alingar district — where most of those killed came from — shouted “Death to Taliban” and “Death to killers” in the provincial capital of Mehtar Lam.

They waved black flags in a sign of mourning.

“They were innocent people, trying to find jobs, and they killed them,” Abdul Wakil Attock, the spokesman for the provincial governor, said about the victims.

The protest in Laghman, a province next to Kabul, underscores the growing rivalry among Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan that also form the core of the Taliban fighters.

An anti-Taliban protest by Pashtuns, like Friday’s, will likely provide the US and other international forces with an opportunity to exploit the rift to drive a wedge between the insurgent group and the civilian population.

Separately, a US coalition raid in Paktika killed three insurgents on Thursday; four others were detained, the coalition said in a statement.

The troops were targeting an insurgent leader accused of facilitating the movement of foreign fighters and weapons throughout eastern Afghanistan.

The region borders Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt, which the US says militants use as a sanctuary from which to launch attacks in both countries.