Pakistani Leader Calls for Unity

With Pakistan’s fundamentalist Islamic leaders calling for mass demonstrations and a general strike, President Pervez Musharraf appealed to his people Wednesday to choose wisdom over emotion and back his decision to help the United States in its war against terrorism.

“When the national interest is at stake, you have to think wisely and act prudently,” he said in a nationally televised address. “It is a time to show prudence. We have to save ourselves.”

But an alliance of fundamentalist groups met Musharraf’s call for unity with a call of its own--for a nationwide protest Friday against his government and the United States.

Musharraf’s speech came on a day of mounting tensions in the region. Among the developments:

* Anti-American protesters gathered in the cities of Rawalpindi and Karachi and vowed to declare a holy struggle against the U.S. if American forces attack neighboring Afghanistan. The Musharraf government reportedly informed multinational companies that it could no longer guarantee the safety of foreign employees in Pakistan, and many Western embassies advised their citizens to leave the country. In the city of Sialkot, a bomb blast killed six people and injured many others in what authorities called “an act of sabotage.”

* Panicked refugees from Afghanistan, fearful of a U.S. military strike, streamed into Pakistan despite closure of major road crossings along the rugged frontier. United Nations officials in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, estimated that about 15,000 people had entered the country over the last few days and that an undetermined number was on the move in Afghanistan.

* Radical Mullah Samiul Haq, chairman of an alliance of Islamic groups called the Pakistan and Afghanistan Defense Council, called for the Friday protests and told reporters in Rawalpindi that any U.S. military action would lead to “unending destruction and war.”

* Political and religious leaders in Kabul, the Afghan capital, continued deliberations on whether to surrender Saudi exile Osama bin Laden to the West. Bin Laden has lived under the protection of the ruling Taliban movement for five years and has been labeled “suspect No. 1” by President Bush in last week’s attacks on the U.S. The few fragmentary accounts of the meeting that reached Pakistan indicated that the Afghan leaders have no intention of quickly giving up Bin Laden.

In these fast-moving political currents, Musharraf gave what one analyst called “the speech of his life” in an effort to swing public opinion. Appearing stiff and somber before the cameras in his army general’s uniform, Musharraf told his people that siding with the country’s Taliban allies instead of the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks would have had catastrophic consequences for Pakistan, causing political isolation that could endanger the state’s existence.

Events of the last week, he said, had plunged Pakistan into its worst crisis since a 1971 war against India, when the eastern portion of the country broke free and formed Bangladesh. He implied that if the nation did not side with the U.S., India would feel free to move against Pakistan.

In an effort to win over Islamic groups, he likened his decision to the prophet Muhammad’s brief tactical alliance with the Jewish rulers in the Saudi city of Medina after Muhammad fled Mecca in the 7th century. It was an alliance that allowed the prophet to survive and eventually return to take Mecca.

“He had wisdom,” Musharraf said. “Was this cowardice?”

Much as the country itself, reaction to the speech was divided. Mainstream political figures praised it, while religious party leaders dismissed it as irrelevant.

“No Pakistani will change his mind because of this speech,” said Syed Munnawar Hasan, spokesman for the country’s largest religious-based party, the Jamaat-i-Islami. “All the people of Pakistan will be on the streets.”

Musharraf’s decision to offer intelligence, the use of Pakistan’s airspace and logistical support in U.S. efforts to capture Bin Laden has touched off a major backlash among a sizable segment of Pakistan’s staunchly Muslim population.

Among Pakistan’s Islamic fundamentalist groups and the people who live in the country’s Northwest Frontier region near Afghanistan, emotions have run especially high because Musharraf has, in effect, abandoned a friend, neighbor and fellow Muslim nation. In addition, maintaining friendly ties with Afghanistan has long been viewed as essential here in light of Pakistan’s large and powerful adversary to the east, India.

The U.S. believes that Pakistan’s support is crucial if it is to get to Bin Laden and break the international terrorist network he is believed to run.

In a steamy, packed room filled with foreign and Pakistani journalists in Rawalpindi, Mullah Haq said Pakistani Muslims must stand with the Taliban.

“We have decided to launch a resistance movement,” he said. “On Friday . . . all the religious and political parties will mobilize the masses against this attack and hold demonstrations all over the country. On that day we will observe complete strikes all over Pakistan, and then we will gradually increase our peaceful movement.”

A charismatic mullah who heads a madrasa, or school, that turns out scores of Islamic supporters for Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, Haq said an expected U.S. strike against Afghanistan would result in a regional war that would inevitably spread to Pakistan.

“There is no legal and moral justification for the American attack. . . . This amounts to violation of all human and basic rights, and we call it terrorism,” he declared.

At a briefing Wednesday evening, U.N. officials discussed what they portrayed as a major humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan as the country, already on the verge of famine, braces for a possible U.S. attack.

All U.N. and international aid workers already have been evacuated from Afghanistan for security reasons, and even some local staff are leaving their posts, said Stephanie Bunker, a U.N. spokeswoman.

In addition, the Afghan government has closed its airspace, meaning that there are no more aid flights into and out of the country.

Border closures and the departure of relief workers have hampered efforts to aid impoverished Afghans.

“Previously we believed that there were 5 1/2 to 6 million vulnerable people, meaning people who needed some kind of assistance,” Bunker said. “At this point in time, we do not have a clear picture of how many people we will be able to help.”