Bored in Afghanistan?

Abstract

In the afternoon of 6 February 2006, a warning came that some people were going to demonstrate outside the ‘occupied’ Old Bank in the city of Meymaneh in Northern Afghanistan close to the border with Turkmenistan, where Norwegian soldiers were based. It was organised as a protest against the publication of the so-called ‘Muhammad cartoons’ in a Danish newspaper and in a Norwegian Christian weekly. Since demonstrations of this kind were not rare, the soldiers were neither afraid nor upset, regarding it as a rather routine task. The next morning, the anticipated controlled and moderate demonstration turned into a most violent one. In fact, Norwegian soldiers experienced a war-like situation, quite rare for soldiers mostly experienced in peacekeeping operations.