ISLAMABAD, 21 March 2003 — Pakistan slammed the United States strikes on Baghdad yesterday in its strongest criticism to date of war against Iraq, as bitter protests erupted, security forces swung to high alert and US diplomats packed their bags in anticipation of a violent backlash.
“Pakistan deplores the initiation of military action against Iraq,” Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri told a press conference.
“Our position is quite clear, we are against war. This should end as soon as possible because any prolongation of this war will mean that there will be more civilian deaths.”
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said Pakistan, a United Nations Security Council member, “regretted” that efforts to prevent war had failed.
“We tried our utmost to prevent it,” Rashid told AFP. “The United Nations Security Council did not approve war. It is America’s own decision.”
In the protracted months-long debate that ended with the US and its allies dropping their bid for UN approval, Pakistan was one of six council members who never formally aligned themselves with pro-war or anti-war camps, as it trod a delicate tightrope between loyalties to its US ally, and its anti-war populace.
Foreign embassies, churches, and key government installations were under heavy guard as fury spread through extremist groups and protesters took to the streets denouncing the US and hailing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as a “hero of Muslims.”
Thousands of protesters, Christians and Muslims, took to the streets and extremist parties called for a nationwide strike on Friday.
“Iraq is the land of prophets. We will avenge the attack on its soil,” the hard-line Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) party’s Riaz Durrani told some 2,000 protesters in the eastern city of Lahore.
In Karachi, students burned US flags and sang Saddam’s praises. “Saddam’s resistance to the tyrant has made him the hero of entire Muslim world. Now we are ready to be martyred for this great mujahid (fighter) of Islam,” a student leader said to the crowd.
“America has signed its own death warrant,” declared JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, adding that jihad or holy war against the US was “justified” in response to the strikes on Iraq.
“It is horrendous, it is disastrous, it is the beginning of the end of American imperialism,” MMA Senator Khurshid Ahmed told AFP.
On the Karachi Stock Exchange investor confidence in a swift war with little economic impact sent stocks rallying to a six-week high of 2590.39 points.
