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AFGHANISTAN: CITIZENS PROTEST PRESENCE OF FOREIGNERS May 31, 2006

(SomaliNet) Many Afghans have resented the presence of Western aid workers in Afghanistan claiming that the foreigners are a privileged elite, earning hefty salaries and given to drinking alcohol while this shattered Islamic nation remains mired in violence and poverty.

The Afghans say Western aid workers drive past Afghan beggars cradling naked, dirty children. U.S. military vehicles race through trash-strewn streets with their guns pointed into traffic.

This wrangle stirred up Monday's deadly anti-Western riots, the latest of several bouts of unrest that have wracked Afghanistan in the past year

After several years the worst riots seen in Kabul began after a U.S. military truck whose brakes failed careered down a hill and plowed into cars at an intersection, killing at least one Afghan.

Where as many Afghans generally are grateful to the U.S.-led military alliance for ousting the Taliban in 2001 and welcome help from international charities, many residents also long to lift themselves out of poverty and take control of their destinies, more than four years after the downfall of the Taliban's strict Islamic rule.

“We don't want these foreigners, they should go home. They're damaging our society, the economy is terrible and we're so poor. And they're looting Afghanistan. Why aren't they building factories?” asked Faisal Agha, who was injured in the riots that left at least 11 dead and scores wounded.

"Now there's prostitution, alcohol. There's more vice," the 45-year-old policeman said from his hospital bed, his eyes puffy and face bruised after falling during Monday's chaos.

Nearly 3,000 and 4,000 foreign civilians are believed to be working in Afghanistan alongside 23,000 American troops and 9,000 members of a NATO-led multinational force, mostly from Western countries.

Meanwhile, Foreign intervention has been a thread running through the past quarter-century of strife in Afghanistan.

Soviet forces invaded in 1979, and Arab fighters helped drive them out a decade later. After the Taliban took control in 1996, establishing a theocracy that banned music and television, and sheltered.