ISAF Boss Orders ‘Training’ Amid Quran-Burning Outrage

All troops serving in Afghanistan will get mandatory training on the handling of the Quran and other Islamic religious materials as commanders struggle to quell Afghan outrage over this week's burning of some books outside Kabul.

The top spokesman of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, told reporters at the Pentagon via satellite that Monday's incident has already had "considerable consequences" around Afghanistan and that he regrets the deaths of people killed in the unrest.

"We are obviously aware about the graveness of what has happened, the graveness of this incident," he said.

ISAF commander Marine Gen. John Allen has ordered all troops in the country to get additional training by March 3 about "the proper handling of religious materials."

"The training will include the identification of religious materials, their significance, correct handling and storage," according to a statement.

Jacobson said an investigation is already underway into the chain of events that led to the destruction of the religious materials. ISAF has asked officials from the Afghan Interior Ministry to participate.

Jacobson would not confirm press reports that Afghan detainees had been writing in the Qurans to pass messages to each other, or that some of the material had been pulled and ordered destroyed because it contained radical messages.

However it came to be selected and thrown out, the religious material -- Jacobson said it isn't clear yet precisely what was involved, beyond the Qurans -- was ordered destroyed just like normal paper documents. So it was sent to a burn pit where some Afghans work, who saw what they were being asked to incinerate and secreted some of it out. The story broke soon after.

It's possible that ISAF detention guards saw Afghan detainees writing in the books, or discovered handwritten messages in them, and ordered them thrown away. If this was standard practice at the detention facility to keep inmates from communicating, that could mean Qurans or other materials had been destroyed before, but Jacobson said he didn't know for sure.

Jacobson, Allen, and other top American and international officials have declined to talk in detail about Monday's incident, citing the investigation that has just gotten underway. They are eager to avoid more public anger in Afghanistan and stressed how seriously they take the situation.

According to a Pentagon announcement Wednesday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has been apologizing for the incident in every meeting with his Afghan counterparts this week. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued his own apology on Tuesday.