Author: Willis Witter
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: October 13, 2001
URL: http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011013-11583678.htm
CHARSADHA, Pakistan - Fist-pumping
protesters yesterday marked the first Muslim Sabbath since the onset of
U.S.-led air strikes on Afghanistan, clashing with police as white-robed
clerics urged crowds to prepare for a decade of "holy war" against the
United States.
In the southern Pakistani city of
Karachi, police fired shots into the air and canisters of tear gas into
crowds of more than 20,000, who rampaged through the city burning vehicles
and one Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
Two protesters were injured. At
least 60 Afghans were arrested in the protests and are being deported to
Afghanistan, officials said.
With a heavy police and army presence,
protests in Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar and other cities passed largely without
incident, and supporters of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf took heart
that the turnout was smaller than many had expected.
[In Kabul, in the early hours today,
new explosions were reported as U.S.-led forces ended a short respite with
renewed air strikes.
[Eight powerful explosions were
heard and at least one bomb dropped on the airport, witnesses told Reuters
news agency.
["From my house, I could see a bomb
land on the airport, I saw a fireball, debris flying up into the sky and
the initial big fire, then dimming," one witness said.]
Yesterday's brief pause in the U.S.
campaign against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban was attributed to respect
for a Muslim festival commemorating the mystical journey by the Prophet
Muhammad to heaven, known as the Night Journey or the Ascent.
Still, the ferocity of anti-American
hatred on display in Pakistan proved unnerving, with people scorning President
Bush as an enemy of Islam and vowing to fight to the death against the
United States.
"Bush said it was a 'crusade,' and
we accept that. Yes, it is a crusade. It is a war between Muslims and non-Muslim,"
former lawmaker Gohar Shah told a crowd of thousands in the town of Charsadha,
near the Afghan border in Pakistan's rugged Northwest Frontier province.
"It is not a question of one or
two years. We are ready to fight for 10 years," Mr. Shah said to cheers
from thousands of white-capped protesters who filled the downtown plaza
on a sunny autumn afternoon.
The reference was clear. A day earlier,
as U.S. bombs rained on targets in the Afghan capital of Kabul and other
cities, Mr. Bush had warned Americans to expect a battle of one or two
years. The decade referred to the Afghanistan's 1979-89 war to expel occupying
Soviet troops.
"We are used to jihad. We fought
the Russians for 10 years," said Ibrahim, a businessman attending the rally.
"If America wants to wind up like the Russians, then come to Afghanistan.
In the name of Islam, we are willing to destroy ourselves."
Yesterday's protests came after
five days of bombing of military targets throughout Afghanistan in an effort
to weaken Afghanistan's ruling Taliban government and pressure it to hand
over Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 suicide
airliner attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Yesterday, Taliban spokesmen said
the American bombing had killed at least 200 civilians in a village near
Jalalabad, but that could not be independently verified. The village is
suspected of being a training camp for bin Laden militia.
In northern Afghanistan, rebel troops
and Taliban soldiers were reported to be locked in fierce fighting near
the northern city and key stronghold of Mazar-e-Sharif. Mohajeddin Mehdi,
an official in Tajikistan affiliated with the opposition's government-in-exile,
said the opposition had seized strategic points to block Taliban supply
routes.
The Taliban, for its part, said
they had recaptured the Quadis district in the northern Badgis province,
which has changed hands several times. The private Afghan Islamic Press
agency reported the claim, citing the Taliban as saying they captured 50
opposition fighters and that several rebels died. Neither side's reports
could be independently verified.
The U.S. bombing campaign has fueled
unrest throughout the Muslim world, reflected yesterday in anti-American
protests in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Malaysia and throughout
the Middle East.
By the time the Pentagon announced
a halt in bombings yesterday, night had already fallen on this side of
the world and protesters had gone home.
The fervor of yesterday's protests
reflected the key problem confronting the United States in its war on terrorism.
While it has won support from Pakistan's
Gen. Musharraf and leaders of other Muslim nations, Mr. Bush's repeated
assertions that the battle is against terrorism and not Islam has had little
discernible effect here.
Banners with pictures of bin Laden
and of Mr. Bush being driven into the ground by a boot symbolizing Islam
rose above the crowd in Charsadha.
The crowds roared in agreement to
repeated exhortations: "Are you ready for jihad?" "Are we with Osama?"
"Long live the Taliban" and "Down with America."
When Western reporters wandered
into the crowd, plainclothes policemen quickly hustled them up a darkened
stairway to a balcony above the angry crowd.
"Our government is a slave of America,"
shouted Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest
Muslim-based party. "If Musharraf steps aside, then America will be in
our hands."
Leaders of major Muslim political
parties called for a nationwide strike on Monday to continue the protest.
The government says militant Islamists
represent only a small minority in the nation of 145 million and that most
support the decision to side with the United States against the Taliban
and bin Laden, who has waged his war against the West since being granted
shelter in Afghanistan five years ago.
The government threatened to crack
down against violent protests, and several of the nation's militant religious
party leaders remained under house arrest.
"There are only a few extremist
elements, who tried to disrupt law and order, but we have given instructions
to the law enforcement agencies not to allow anybody to take law in their
hands," Gen. Musharraf's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Quereshi, said in
the capital of Islamabad.
