United States blamed for cancelled pilgrimage

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The old Afghan farmer introduced himself by the name he was not - "Hajji," a Muslim honored for having made the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. He then burst into tears.

Angry Afghans milled around him yesterday, also seething over trips for the annual Mecca pilgrimage that were promised, paid for and now canceled out of the U.S. military-controlled airport at Kandahar.

The Afghan government blamed bomb-damaged runways at the U.S.-held airport; disappointed would-be pilgrims blamed the Afghan government and the United States.

"How can I return to my family, my village?" asked the white-bearded farmer, Shahqatullah, wearing the faded turban and shawls of a man of little means. "I told them I was going on the pilgrimage. How can I go home to them now? How? I am too ashamed."

Afghans, wealthy and poor, crowded by the hundreds with him outside Kandahar's government-run bank, whipped by Afghan security forces' severed tree branches when they pressed to go inside the dank concrete building for refunds for their dreamed-of, called-off pilgrimages.

Authorities in Kandahar province announced Saturday that no pilgrim flights would be leaving from the southern city's airport, now used by the U.S.-led military coalition as its largest base in Afghanistan.

"Even the Russians did not stop us from going on the hajj, when they were here. And now, now, the Americans are stopping us. They are stopping us in our own land," Shahqatullah cried.

Thwarted pilgrims around him broke in with their own condemnations of Americans and their own, struggling Afghan government.