Turnout Low at Protests in Pakistan

Islamic groups called thousands of people onto the streets of Pakistan’s major cities Friday for anti-American and anti-government demonstrations, but the turnout was smaller than expected and protest leaders failed in their goal of shutting down the country with a general strike.

The largest gathering and only major violence came in the southern city of Karachi, where three people were killed. Few arrests or disturbances were reported elsewhere. In most cities, only shops near protest sites closed.

The demonstrations were the first major test of strength for those opposed to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to help the United States track down terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden, and the government here clearly was relieved at the low turnout.

“It confirms that President Musharraf has the support of most segments of the society,” said Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, a presidential aide. “I think the people of Pakistan understand what is happening.”

Bin Laden, a Saudi-born leader of a militant network that the U.S. believes conducted last week’s attacks on New York and the Pentagon, has lived in Afghanistan for five years under the protection of the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban government.

Religious leaders in Pakistan have expressed anger that Musharraf offered to help the U.S. in ways that could lead to a military attack against a friendly neighboring Muslim country.

Despite the low turnout, organizers declared their day of protest a success. “Wherever we gave a call to strike, all businesses remained shut,” insisted Abdul Jaleel, a spokesman with the prominent Islamic-based Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam party.

Political analysts in Pakistan warned that any U.S. attack against Afghanistan would almost certainly bring far more people into the streets.

They cited two reasons for Friday’s lower-than-expected turnout:

* Musharraf’s televised address to the nation Wednesday, which appeared go over well with many middle-class Pakistanis.

* Thursday’s news from the Afghan capital, Kabul, that a council of more than 1,000 Muslim clerics had issued an edict encouraging Bin Laden to leave the country voluntarily.

“The edict may have convinced some people not to go” to the protests, noted Rifaat Hussain, who heads the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. “They may have hesitated and asked, ‘What’s the point if he may not be innocent?’ ”

An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 people took part in several protests in Karachi, scene of the worst violence Friday. Three people were killed by private security guards in two incidents when protesters tried to break into a factory and a shop. Two security guards were injured when demonstrators attacked a McDonald’s and a KFC restaurant.

Police reported that eight officers were injured in clashes with protesters in the city. More than 100 people were arrested.

Protests drew 5,000 people in the capital, Islamabad, and an equal number in Peshawar, a major city along Pakistan’s approximately 1,400-mile-long border with Afghanistan. Although urged on by organizers with virulent anti-American rhetoric, the demonstrations remained largely peaceful and broke up without major incident.

In Quetta, a western Pakistani city ringed by harsh, dry mountains, the mood was more aggressive. About 5,000 people who sympathized with the Taliban rallied in front of a central mosque and vowed to declare holy war and fight alongside the Afghan fundamentalist movement if the U.S. attacks Afghanistan.

At one point, a young man leaned into a taxi’s window and said in English to an American correspondent: “Sir, we will kill Mr. Bush!”

Quetta has a large community of Pushtuns, the ethnic group that forms the majority of the Taliban, and students from Koranic schools here filled the ranks of the movement’s militia in 1994 when it began its march to power in Afghanistan.

Islamic political parties in Quetta have contributed money to the Taliban. In addition, about 300,000 to 400,000 Afghan refugees live in the city, many of them openly claiming to be Taliban fighters and supporting the spread of its strict Islamic form of government to Pakistan.

One of the organizers of the Quetta protest, Hafez Sharudi, district general secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam party, said in an interview that the protests sent the message that Bin Laden has not been proved guilty of anything.

“Bush is just holding a gun in the darkness, and he is firing with no [sure] target,” he said. “So he is just earning the enmity of the whole Islamic world.”

Virtually everywhere, anti-Americanism was a major focus.

In Peshawar, a relatively small and orderly protest was held beneath the green onion domes of the historic Qasim Khan mosque.

Fazl-ur Rehman, national leader of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam, arrived in a truck. One of his retinue sat atop the vehicle’s cab with an effigy for burning. It had a New York Yankees’ insignia painted on the back and another just above the heart.

Afghans drove out the Soviet army in 1989 and will do the same to the Americans if they attack, Rehman said.

“We warned the United States many times before to change its policy,” he said. “But when Americans were punished on their own soil, now the United States administration says this is terrorism, while the United States is also promoting terrorism in Pakistan, Yugoslavia and Chechnya.”

In Peshawar, where Bin Laden’s network has deep roots, old threats take on a new gravity as the prospect of war approaches with Afghanistan.

Several in the crowd Friday made certain, in the best English they could manage, that a Western reporter knew it wouldn’t be so peaceful if the U.S. attacks Afghanistan.

“We will kill America!” one protester warned.

At the Red Mosque in Islamabad, protesters gathered after Friday prayers and marched toward the city’s main commercial area, carrying anti-American banners and chanting slogans against the United States and for their newest hero, Bin Laden. About half the approximately 2,500 people who joined the march were youths, many of them not yet in their teens.

Near the mosque, men handed out leaflets containing a prayer urging followers to have the strength to sacrifice their lives and those of their children for Bin Laden, “this pious Arab billionaire.” And, as at many of the protests, speakers demanded evidence to back the U.S. allegations against the Saudi militant.

“Pakistanis are rational people,” said Mohammed Akram, a carpenter attending a small gathering in Rawalpindi. “If America presents its evidence, we will look at it.”

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Marshall reported from Islamabad, Watson from Peshawar and Daniszewski from Quetta.