New Anti-US Protests Rock Pakistan

Published on Friday, January 20, 2006   by Agence France Presse

Thousands of Pakistanis protested against a US airstrike targeting Al-Qaeda leaders, burning effigies of US President George Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Around 2,000 demonstrators marched through the troubled tribal town of Wana and more than 1,000 led by hardliners in the northwestern city of Peshawar chanted "We are ready to support Osama and Zawahiri", police and witnesses said. Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri was the target of last Friday's missile raid on a village near the Afghan border that killed 18 civilians and four Al-Qaeda operatives. Nationwide protests also erupted last weekend after the attack, whose victims reportedly included Zawahiri's son-in-law and a bomb expert with a five-million-dollar US reward on his head. "Musharraf cannot protect the country because he is protecting American interests," Abdul Ghaffar, a leader of the Muttahid Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) religious alliance, told the rally in central Peshawar on Friday. Another MMA leader asked the prayer-cap wearing protestors to raise their hands if they were ready for jihad (holy war), and most members of the crowd raised their hands, witnesses said. Protest leaders signed a petition calling on the government to shut down the US consulate in Peshawar as activists torched dummies of Bush and Musharraf. "The demonstration was peaceful. Between 900 to 1,000 people participated," Peshawar police chief Habib-ur Rehman told AFP. Witnesses also put turnout at around 1,000. In Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal area, around 2,000 tribesmen marched through a main marketplace chanting "Death to America", "Allah is great" and "Stop killing innocent Muslims." "The US action in Bajur shows our government's failure. It has got atom bombs and jets but it cannot stop foreign forces intruding into its territory," tribal elder Maulana Abdul Aziz told the crowd, referring to the Bajur tribal agency where the attack took place. About 1,500 tribesmen in Mohamand tribal district bordering Afghanistan held another rally against the airstrike. Hundreds of people also held demonstrations outside mosques in the eastern city of Lahore, near the border with India, after regular Friday prayers. Earlier some 200 lawyers rallied outside the High Court building in Lahore while protesters gathered outside the headquarters of Pakistan's largest hardline religious party, Jamaat-i-Islami. "We condemn the US airstrike in Bajur and we also condemn the government for its pro-American policies," party leader Amirul Azeem said in a speech. Separately, lawyers in the central city of Multan boycotted courts to protest against the airstrikes and what they called Musharraf's pro-US policies. "The US attack is a threat to the country's sovereignty. It seems our rulers have mortgaged Pakistan's independence with the United States," Muhammad Irfan Wyne, of the High Court Bar Association, told the rally. Hardline Pakistani Islamic groups, which led last weekend's protests, have vowed to continue until the government expels all US troops who are helping with relief efforts after the devastating South Asian earthquake in October. Pakistan has condemned the airstrike and lodged an official protest with the United States. It says it was given no prior warning. Copyright © 2006 AFP