The Pakistani government on Friday denounced a taped statement apparently made by a senior al Qaeda figure urging the country's army and populace to revolt, and officials insisted they would continue the military operations that have stirred unrest in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas. "We condemn this statement in the strongest possible terms. It is aimed at creating instability and dividing the Pakistan nation," said Sheik Rashid Ahmed, the minister of information. "Those who claim to be defending Islam are actually working against it."
| They don't particularly care about Islam. It's the power that they want, and Islam's the mechanism. It's the brownshirt bully-boy mentality writ large. |
Meanwhile, a coalition of Islamic political parties formally allied with Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, staged protests in five cities, calling the president a traitor to Islam and demanding a halt to the army operations in the South Waziristan tribal area, where nearly 100 people have been killed in the past two weeks.
| That would be the MMA. They're a lot more closely allied with the Bad Guys than they are with Perv. |
"Musharraf, you are killing innocent children and women, but don't forget that a bullet can also kill you," warned one Islamic cleric at a rally of about 4,000 men in Rawalpindi, a major city 15 miles from the capital.
| Sounds like a death threat to me. |
The protest was peaceful, but demonstrators burned and kicked effigies of Musharraf, also the chief of Pakistan's army, and carried posters calling him a dog and a traitor.
| Doesn't sound peaceful to me. |
Musharraf, who survived two assassination attempts in December, has since moved more aggressively against Islamic radicals. The protracted military confrontation has kindled widening political opposition, including a walkout by members of the national parliament Thursday, the Islamic party protests Friday and scattered attacks on military targets across the tribal region that hugs the border with Afghanistan.
| They do the walkout thing at least twice a week and Qazi's always got people in the streets for one thing or the other. Gives the rubes something to do, and they always pass the collection plate. |
Military officials have held off further attacks for the last three days while tribal elders tried to negotiate the release of hostages and the surrender of foreign and local Islamic fighters hidden inside heavily guarded village compounds. So far, the initiative has not produced results.
On the other hand, officials said Friday that recently formed tribal armies had begun punitive actions such as house demolitions against families who refused to cooperate with military authorities or had been involved in recent attacks. At Friday's rallies, speakers accused Musharraf of being a slave to anti-Islamic U.S. policies, called for his resignation and said he was pitting Pakistani troops and tribesmen against each other at his peril. Some tried to stir religious emotions by invoking the death of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Palestinian militant leader assassinated by Israeli forces this week. "The time has come for us to stand up like Sheik Yassin, not to take orders from America, but to stand up against the evil forces who would destroy our world," said Ghulam Sabiba, a Kashmiri Islamic leader and member of the five-party Islamic coalition that has been both Musharraf's critic and his negotiating partner. Some opponents of Musharraf have charged that the Waziristan operation was hastily arranged to please U.S. officials when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell visited here last week. The Bush administration has repeatedly praised Musharraf for carrying out the raids, and it has rewarded his government by dropping economic sanctions imposed after nuclear tests in 1998 and a military coup in 1999.
But Pakistani officials, answering the criticism by Islamic groups, insisted Friday that they were only trying to rid the tribal areas of pernicious foreign extremists and were acting in the national interest rather than at Washington's behest. "Pakistan does not need to take orders from anyone," Rashid Ahmed said late Friday. "Our troops are fighting foreigners, not tribesmen. Our war is against terrorists, and we won't allow anyone to use our soil for such actions." If anything, he suggested, the government waited too long to attack, after repeated amnesties gave militants the opportunity to reinforce themselves. |