According to an Indian security analyst, the Islamist rioting in Afghanistan is being deliberately incited by well-organized agents of the Hizb ut-Tahrir terror gang, who quickly recognized the Newsweek “Quran desecration” story as a propaganda windfall. (Hat tip: eschew_obfuscation.)

South Asian political and security analyst Bahukutumbi Raman said the protests in Afghanistan were not spontaneous.

“They had been well-prepared, and were well-organized and well-orchestrated. Groups of students went from town to town instigating the local students to take to the streets.”

Raman, who is director of the Institute For Topical Studies in the Indian city of Chennai, also reported that many members of the police and army appeared to have sympathized with the protestors.

He cited “reliable Afghan sources” as saying the demonstrations had been organized by a growing global movement called Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami.

Raman describes Hizb ut-Tahrir as a veteran group with a secretive leadership and structure, which shares al-Qaeda’s goal of an Islamic caliphate under Islamic law, but focuses on mass agitation rather than acts of terrorism.

The movement emphasized the importance of clandestine penetration of security forces, he said. The violence in Afghanistan illustrated “the extent of its penetration not only in the student community, but also in the Afghan security forces.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamic Party of Liberation) was founded in the then Jordanian-occupied East Jerusalem in the early 1950s and has spread across Europe and Asia, with a particularly strong foothold in the Central Asian Republics.

UPDATE at 5/16/05 9:38:34 am:

More information about Newsweek’s Islamist partners: Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Party of Liberation). (Hat tip: BabbaZee.)