On Monday, a convoy of US Humvee vehicles crashed with civilian cars stalled in a traffic jam in Kabul, Afghanistan. The accident, which killed three people according to police and eyewitnesses cited by the Associated Press, led to stone-throwing, calls of "Down with America!" and eventually city-wide riots . US troops and Afghan security forces reportedly fired into an angry crowd. In all, at least eight people were killed and more than 100 injured, according to the AP. Some 23,000 US troops have been stationed in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001. Tensions between the troops and the local population are high, with US soldiers fearing suicide attacks and often driving recklessly and gunners pointing weapons at civilian vehicles.

The violence continued on Tuesday, when a gunman riding a motorcycle shot and killed three female Afghan employees of an international aid group and their driver as they traveled through northern Afghanistan. "We think it could be a backlash, particularly against Afghan women working," Kate Nustedt, spokeswoman for the South African-based ActionAid , told the AP.

German papers attribute considerable significance to the latest outbreak of violence, interpreting it as a clear indication of the limits of US policy in Afghanistan. All papers emphasize the precarious nature of the democratic government, warning against the danger of a return to war or Taliban despotism.

"Kabul, Highly Flammable" is the title of an editorial on the riots published in Tuesday's edition of the center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. It begins by contrasting the "colorful and busy" city of Kabul with "dusty Kandahar" in southern Afghanistan. If Kabul is normally a relatively safe and tolerant city where contemporary culture prospers -– in the form of "Afghan hip hop bands," for example –- then Kandahar is the place where "the Taliban, having regrouped, are preparing for their insurrection against the new times." Ultimately, the commentator suggests, Kandahar reflects the general situation in Afghanistan more accurately than Kabul. The capital is an "island" –- and one that is "sometimes flooded by a wave of violence," as on Monday. The riots that broke out following the accident at a busy Kabul intersection were an opportunity for Afghans to "vent their rage over the often ruthless behavior of the US troops" and in this sense "merely the surface appearance of a much deeper conflict," the commentator argues. "Parts of Afghanistan's divided society are strongly opposed to the future envisioned for their country by the West," such that those who want to prevent "a return to the barbarity of the Taliban regime need not just a strong arm, but sometimes a little sensitivity too," the commentator concludes.

"The strategy in Afghanistan was always the opposite of the one in Iraq," notes an editorial in the business daily Handelsblatt. "A large coalition of states participated militarily in the pacification of the country, generous aid was provided for reconstruction, and countless organizations were dispatched to Afghanistan in order to build a functioning community." Yet all of this is not enough to make US policy in Afghanistan a success story; in fact, the commentator points out, "success is highly uncertain." The changes Afghanistan has undergone since 2001 are "superficial" and insufficient for rapidly transforming habits of thought and behavior developed over two decades. "Why should an Afghan be more loyal to his president than to a local elder," the commentator asks, "and why should women, who never played any significant role in Afghan society, suddenly be equal to men?" The commentator argues that "Western arrogance and ignorance" have contributed to the instability of contemporary Afghanistan; add to this the "false promises of the Taliban" and there results "a mix that might be deadly for the country –- and for its foreign helpers." These "helpers" ought perhaps "to settle for more moderate goals –- even if that means less democracy – in order to prevent everything from falling apart," the commentator concludes.

An editorial in the Financial Times Deutschland, opens by citing an assessment of the situation in Afghanistan offered by NATO in January: "Quiet, but not stable." Now, however, "the situation is neither quiet nor stable," the commentator argues. The "terror of the Taliban" has "reached the country's capital" and "popular rage" is now "easily provoked," such that "unrest in Kabul is becoming more and more frequent." After a survey of the "image problems" US troops have suffered elsewhere –- such as in South Korea, where protests broke out in 2002 after a military vehicle ran over two schoolgirls -– the commentator suggests that Monday's "rage at the USA" was also "rage at the government and at foreigners in general." Perhaps the protests were "manipulated and instigated," but in any case the "people's anger has a real foundation," such that "successes are urgently needed if the Afghans are not supposed to end up with the impression that the foreigners are in their country to humiliate them, rather than to protect them."

-- Max Henninger, 11:10 a.m., CET

Divded over Papal Address in Auschwitz

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI ended a four-day trip to Poland -– the home country of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II –- with a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp  and the memorial site built there. Benedict met 32 concentration camp survivors, most of them Catholics, and kissed the cheeks of one of them, Henryk Mandelstam (the only Jewish survivor of the group). He addressed his own nationality briefly, stating that he was speaking as "a son of the German people."

Born in Bavaria in 1927, Benedict was forced into the Hitler Youth against his will and was drafted into the German army during the final months of World War II. He wrote in his memoirs that he decided to desert in 1945, risking summary execution by the SS. Benedict did not refer to such personal experiences during his visit to Auschwitz. But some, such as Poland's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich, have expressed disappointment that Benedict did not address the issue of anti-Semitism more explicitly during his prayers and papal address.

Several German papers feature editorials on the Pope's visit to Auschwitz, and Benedict's nationality is the focus of most of them. They reveal a clear divide between conservative and left-wing positions, with the former giving Benedict more credit for his theological interpretation of the Holocaust than the latter.

An editorial in the right-wing daily Die Welt opens with a quotation from the late German media mogul Axel Springer (whose publishing house Axel Springer AG owns Die Welt): "Nothing is a coincidence, everything is divine providence." The fact that Benedict's visit to Auschwitz took place almost at the same time as the commemoration service for Paul Spiegel, the recently deceased chairman of the German Jewish Council, was "a coincidence not planned by any human being," according to the commentator. Most of the editorial is devoted to a comparison between Spiegel and the German pontiff. "Having survived the Holocaust, Spiegel devoted his life to the double task of 'not forgetting' and 'reconciliation.' The need to 'always remember' and to 'reconcile' was also the essential motive that brought Benedict to Auschwitz." The editorial concludes by referring to a rainbow that appeared in the sky during Benedict's visit to Auschwitz. "Was it a coincidence or the symbol of the bond between God and men?" the commentator asks in conclusion.

Another conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung raises the question of whether or not Benedict adequately addressed the significance of his own German roots. Its editorial points out that Benedict's predecessor John Paul II was Polish and could therefore speak mainly about the suffering of his people, whereas Benedict's task was first and foremost that of "giving witness" –- "in front of his God and for his God," as the commentator phrases it. "The German Pope can say nothing or almost nothing in defence of the Germans," the commentator notes. True, one passage in Benedict's speech portrays the Germans not so much as supporters than as "victims" of Hitler, such that "those who expected Benedict to confess his guilt as a German were disappointed." Yet according to the commentator, the question of guilt was very much addressed by Benedict, albeit not in political or national, but in spiritual terms: "The Pope wanted to talk about the true tragedy of the 20th century, which consists in men having turned away from God, deceived by inhuman ideologies." In other words, Benedict's refusal to address the specific issue of the political complicity of common Germans in Nazi crimes was "an omission so obvious it can only be deliberate."

The commentator approves of Benedict's theological concept of guilt, and doesn't blame him for not addressing the question of Catholic anti-Semitism under Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) either: "German guilt does not disappear on the view taken by Benedict. The failure of Christians is not glossed over."

Leftist daily Die Tageszeitung takes a more critical view. The paper suggests that "the question of where God was in Auschwitz" –- asked by Benedict during his papal address –- "was perhaps the best thing in the speech." Yet Benedict's portrayal of the Germans as a nation of victims instrumentalized by Nazi ideologues is flatly rejected: "That's not how it was. Millions of Germans helped the Nazis come to power, even if they were never a majority, and millions remained loyal followers for a long time." The commentator discovers affinities between Benedict's remarks and "the view dominant in the 1950s, when the Germans were seen as the victims of a criminal conspiracy, but not as followers and accomplices of the Nazis." Benedict's linking of the Holocaust to a turning away from God is seen as "even more nebulous" and problematic: "Are we to interpret Auschwitz as a warning against atheism in general? As the result of a modernity that is no longer close to God? Or even as the result of the Enlightenment and of secularization?" The commentator suggests in conclusion that while one need not expect Benedict to keep up to date on the historical debate -– "The Pope is not a historian" –- but he should perhaps be more sensitive to the "ideological context of his remarks" and also "more precise." "No one should talk about Auschwitz in terms as vague as those used by Benedict. No Pope should do so, and certainly no German Pope."