Pakistanis Protest U.S. Strikes

Answering militant leaders’ calls, tens of thousands of Pakistanis went on the march Friday--in major cities to protest U.S. airstrikes and in the northwest toward the Afghan border to back up Taliban fighters.

It was Pakistan’s biggest day of public demonstrations since U.S.-led airstrikes in Afghanistan began Oct. 7.

“This is a strange occasion of world history,” said Sufi Mohammed, the cleric in Pakistan’s roiling northwest who summoned Muslims for jihad, or holy war, in Afghanistan. “For the first time, all the anti-Islamic forces are united against Islam.”

The show of support for the fundamentalist militia that rules neighboring Afghanistan came on the Muslim holy day, typically a fertile time for demonstrations because of the massing of people in urban mosques throughout the afternoon.

Nearly 40,000 people marched peacefully through central Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, still well short of the million summoned to rally by the pro-Taliban Afghan Defense Council. A rally in Quetta, a city of 1.2 million, drew thousands.

Demonstrations in Lahore and Islamabad, the capital, drew several hundred people each and unfolded without incident.

Others, some armed, were said to be answering Mohammed’s call to flood Afghanistan and repel any American ground incursions. His son said convoys of volunteers were converging near his madrasa, or religious school, and would enter Afghanistan today.

It was impossible to immediately verify how many were en route to restive North-West Frontier Province, an ethnic Pushtun enclave with close links to Afghanistan. In recent weeks, militants have made claims that have proved highly inflated.

Mohammed, who leads Tehrik Nifaz Shariat Mohammadi Malakand, or Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws, said 10,000 were on the way, many heavily armed. His supporters put the number at 100,000.

Though most of Pakistan’s 145 million people are going about their daily business, President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to back the U.S. anti-terrorism effort against Afghanistan has outraged many in the Islamic nation.

Pakistani authorities have used house arrests and travel bans to keep popular leaders from promoting rallies--part of what Musharraf calls decisive steps against anyone acting “against the national interest.”