page_title: Protests against the war in Afghanistan
section_title: 2011
hierarchical_section_title: Protests against the war in Afghanistan / 2011
caption_attribution_description: Norsk bokmål: Stopp krigen! Jugoslavia, Irak, Afghanistan, Libya ... neste?
context_page_description: The war in Afghanistan prompted large protests around the world, with the first large-scale demonstrations beginning in the days leading up to the war's official launch on October 7, 2001.
  By the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led war, there were 140,000 foreign military troops in Afghanistan, hundreds of billions of dollars expended, and at least 31,000 people in Afghanistan killed by the war, along with approximately 2,750 foreign troops.
context_section_description: On February 12, 2011, the British newspaper The Guardian published a letter from the NGO War on Want and others, asking its readers to email the word "Yes" to register that they want their country to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The campaign is ongoing and the charity plans to present the names received to the British government as a sign of the British public's opposition to the war.
  On October 7, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, over 200 protesters demonstrated outside the White House, denouncing the war, carrying model drones, and demanding an immediate pullout of the Western military forces from that country.
  Hundreds of American war veterans and their families and anti-war protesters marched to Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., carrying signs saying "Fund jobs, not war!" and "Wars are poor chisels for peaceful tomorrows." Speakers included three women from Afghanistan representing the group "Afghans for Peace".
  Ten long years that we have engaged in war, dropping bombs, killing people, spending trillions of dollars.
  We are not listening to Dr. King's words.
  — United for Peace and Justice, October 7, 2011
  In Los Angeles, around 100 people marched downtown to call for an end to the war in Afghanistan on its 10th anniversary. The demonstration started with a prayer service at a church followed by a march to a civic center federal building. 14 peace activists were arrested by authorities for blocking traffic in planned civil disobedience.
  Among those attending the protest was actor Mike Farrell from M*A*S*H who said he believed the war has wasted billions of dollars without significantly affecting terrorism. Farrell also stated his disappointment that President Barack Obama, who was given a Nobel Peace Prize, had continued the war in Afghanistan.
  In New York City, a protest against the war took place in Times Square. Led by the Granny Peace Brigade, they called for the war in Afghanistan to be ended immediately and troops to be brought home.
  In New Jersey, around 70 people led by Princeton-based Coalition of Peace Action demonstrated in Trenton to protest the war in Afghanistan on its 10th anniversary – the longest war waged by the United States in its history. Rev. Robert Moore called for American troops to be brought home now, rather than in 2014, in order to save Afghan civilian lives, the lives of American soldiers, and billions of dollars needed at home:
  [The war in Afghanistan] is taking money away from job creation and other urgent needs at home. For every soldier brought home from Afghanistan, $1 million is saved, which could create 20 jobs at $50,000 each in the United States.
  We need to speak out now, with an estimated 25 million unemployed and foreclosures again on the rise. It's time for our elected officials to bring the war dollars home.
  — Rev. Robert Moore, Coalition of Peace Action
  Jean Athey, head of an activist group in Maryland, who recently visited Afghanistan, spoke of the impact of the war imposed on Afghans:
  There's tremendous suffering there. The Afghanistan people feel the world is fighting a proxy battle in its villages.
  On October 8, 2011, anti-war protesters at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. were pepper-sprayed by security forces and the museum was closed early. The protesters, estimated at 100 to 200 people, had planned to participate in a "die-in" at the museum's "Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles" exhibit to protest the massive military spending and the U.S. use of unmanned military drones against civilians in the war in Afghanistan. Under the Obama administration, drone strikes quadrupled from less than 50 under the Bush administration to more than 220 in the past three years. Dozens of protesters were sickened by the pepper spray, and several people fell to the ground in agony.
  In Chicago, a crowd of around 700 people gathered downtown to protest the decade-long war in Afghanistan. The rally began at noon at Congress Parkway and Michigan Avenue, before the anti-war protest marc
caption: Anti-war protest in Oslo, Norway, May 8, 2011
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