Violence Flares as Pakistanis Protest U.S.

Pockets of frustrated demonstrators, unable to get at an air base where American troops were believed to be. Tense police and soldiers, ordered to protect the facility and public property at all costs. It was a combustible situation Sunday, and in an instant it exploded.

There was a trash fire in the street and insults shouted at police. Then the sudden rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons fire--a few short bursts followed by a series of sharp reports--perhaps a demonstrator shooting back with a handgun. People were running, screaming for ambulances, loading one wounded man onto the back of a donkey cart and racing it toward the hospital.

Minutes later, a white-haired man emerged from the emergency room and raised up a palm drenched in his nephew’s blood. “God is great!” he called out, confirming to the people standing there that 35-year-old Mukhtar Khoso was dead. The mourners instantly wanted to vent their rage, howling in one voice, “We will kill every American!”

“Write! Write!” one man shouted, appealing to journalists to chronicle the shooting. “Because of America, we are killing our own people!”

Such was the scene Sunday in this out-of-the-way city surrounded by peaceful rice fields and palm trees, where U.S. forces have been trying to quietly make use of Pakistan’s Jacobabad air base for logistics operations to help in the attacks on Afghanistan.

In addition to the slain man, at least 12 people were reported injured in protests that went on until nightfall. Hospital authorities said Khoso’s was the only death, although Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam, a religious party, claimed that two people died.

Today, shops in the city went on strike in protest, and tires burned on the main road out of town.

“In Western countries, when there are protest marches, nobody shoots,” Mohammed Hashim Quereshi, an eye surgeon, said bitterly. “Here the puppets of America are killing the public directly.”

The death of Khoso, the son of a mullah, brought to six the protesters killed by police in Pakistan since the U.S. bombings in Afghanistan started a week ago. His father later proclaimed that he was ready to give his six remaining sons as martyrs too.

Amid mounting anger, Pakistani authorities have so far maintained order by using preemptive arrests and massive troop deployments to keep radical religious parties in check. But no one knows how long such ironfisted tactics will work.

A short while after the death in Jacobabad, a police officer turned to a Times reporter and said: “I beseech America to stop the bombings. These will tear our country apart.”

In Quetta, the provincial leader of Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam, Maulana Abdulghaffor Haideri, vowed to continue to challenge the military government of President Pervez Musharraf, who has agreed to help the United States in its campaign against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

“We will keep up with these protests until the last nail is driven in the Musharraf government’s coffin,” he said.

It was Haideri who called for a march on the air base, and he dispatched thousands of party activists for the “siege” of it, about 200 miles away. The majority of protesters, however, never got there. They were waylaid by police on the outskirts of Jacobabad.

In the city itself, police and Ranger paramilitary troops were stationed at every main intersection to prevent protesters from approaching the base. Police also took up positions on roofs and patrolled side streets and outlying villages. The road leading to the base was blocked with a metal gate, and soldiers with machine guns ringed the perimeter.

Only relatively small groups managed to assemble in the city. But by midmorning, there had been several tear gas and rock-throwing skirmishes. The marchers would confront police, retreat and then try again somewhere else.

There was no mistaking the anger and resentment felt by residents at the presence of the Americans nearby. “If you walk in the bazaar you will find not one person who is in favor of America,” declared Ayub Pathan, a 49-year-old businessman. “Everybody is against.”

“The reality is America has never been a faithful friend to us,” said Abdul Salaam, 70, a sign painter. “We are shocked to see Musharraf going along with this. It is like a train where the engine has gone astray, and you can imagine what will happen to the wagons.”

Others complained that the heavy-handed security is hurting business in the area. “Because of the law and order situation, our trade has stopped,” said Mir Khan Mohammed Jamali, the district leader of nearby Nasirabad. “There is uncertainty and insecurity. Nobody is ready to buy our grain, you see.”

So far, however, the American soldiers are more a mystery than a fact--townspeople say they have seen helicopters and planes come and go at dusk and dawn, but not Americans in the flesh.

A local journalist, Hyder Magsi of the Koshish newspaper, said that at about 5 p.m. Saturday he observed what he believed was one U.S. C-130 transport plane, two Cobra attack helicopters and two double-propeller helicopters flying out of the air base.

He said he has also been told from sources at the base that some U.S. personnel have been housed in a hangar, although he was not sure whether they were there Sunday, the day of the demonstration.

The main reason most townspeople are convinced that the Americans are present, however, is the enormously increased security in an ordinary market city of about 150,000 people, situated in the lush Indus Valley of central Pakistan, about 250 miles from the Afghan border.

About a week ago, residents say, government gunmen suddenly took up positions on rooftops--prompting objections from some that the privacy of women in their courtyards would be compromised. Also, the road to the airport was sealed off, and some people living near it were asked to move away.

“I have never seen such security around the airport, even at the time of the wars of India and Pakistan. This shows something is fishy there,” said Ahmen Ali Brohi, president of the Jacobabad chamber of commerce.

The march to Jacobabad, and another protest in Islamabad, the capital, were staged on the eve of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s visit to Pakistan to reinforce U.S. appreciation of and support for the difficult stand taken by Musharraf.

In recent public statements, Powell has repeatedly downplayed the Pakistani protests, describing them as insignificant and under control. Nationwide strikes have been called for today to greet Powell.

The demonstrations have escalated both in scale and rhetoric, with Musharraf emerging as the principal target.

Already facing some problems in the military, Musharraf replaced key commanders last week. Now, he must deal with vociferous religious extremists who have galvanized opposition to his policies.

“If Musharraf tries to stop us from protecting Pakistan,” said Maulana Nafeez Uddin, a Muslim cleric who spoke Sunday at a demonstration in Islamabad, “we will stomp on him like we would stomp on a dog.”

For the past two days, there have also been signs that the religious extremists leading the fiercely anti-American protests have been joined by local leaders of the two largest mainstream political parties, the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League. Although the national leadership of the parties has not condoned the protests, it appears that some opposition politicians sense a potential weakness in Musharraf’s rule.

In Islamabad on Sunday, about 1,500 demonstrators gathered in one of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods near embassies, diplomatic housing and hotels of the 1,000-plus journalists who have descended on the normally sleepy capital.

As news of the death in Jacobabad spread through the crowd, speakers condemned the government’s handling of the situation. “Instead of turning its guns against India, it is killing its own people,” said one speaker.

Assembling outside the Motumir ul Islam Mosque, the Islamabad protesters railed against Musharraf, President Bush and Powell.

“Powell is coming here for Pakistan to sell out Kashmir!” shouted one demonstrator, referring to Pakistan’s ongoing dispute with India over the predominantly Muslim Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Powell is scheduled to travel later to New Delhi to meet with Indian leaders as part of a campaign to build support for the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism.

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Daniszewski reported from Jacobabad and Tempest from Islamabad. Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.