ISLAMABAD: More than 10,000 Pakistanis protested yesterday against allowing US forces to ship supplies through Pakistan into Afghanistan in a sign of growing pressure on Islamabad to harden its foreign policy.
It was one of the largest rallies against the government since it took office in March. Militants have attacked trucks using the critical Khyber Pass route several times in recent weeks.
The protesters - backers of Jamaat-e-Islami - also decried US missile strikes targeting Al-Qaeda and Taleban leaders in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border and Pakistani military offensives against Islamic insurgents in the area.
Banner-toting demonstrators chanted “Down with America” and “Jihad is the only solution of America” as they marched along a key road in the main northwestern city of Peshawar, led by national party chief Qazi Husain Ahmed. “If America continues atrocities against Muslims, it will also not be able to live in peace,” Express television quoted Ahmed as saying.
“We consider the presence of American forces in Afghanistan a big conspiracy against Pakistan,” Ahmed told the protesters. “They take their supplies to Afghanistan on our roads and in return they kill our people with bombs. This must be stopped,” he said.
Yesterday’s protest was the first major rally by Islamists in Peshawar for several years. Ahmed did not refer to the militant attacks on the supply routes and urged the crowd to show opposition peacefully. “Don’t take up guns in your hands but greet these convoys with black flags as they pass by your homes to force them to stop,” he said.
The Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist groups rose to power in North-West Frontier Province by exploiting anti-US sentiment in 2002 elections. They were routed in February polls by secular and Pashtun nationalist parties. About 300 trucks delivering supplies for the Western forces in Afghanistan have been destroyed in a string of attacks by militants near Peshawar over the past two weeks.
Sirajul Haq, Jamaat-e-Islami’s provincial chief, threatened to cut off the convoys. “We will no longer let arms and ammunition pass through ... and reach the hands of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan,” he told the crowd. “They are using the same against our innocent brothers, sisters and children.”
The protest comes at a time that the government is dealing with fallout from the Mumbai terror attacks that killed more than 170 people. India says the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group was behind November’s attacks. Pakistan has arrested some suspects and clamped down on a charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, allegedly linked to the outlawed group, but it insists it needs evidence from India.
