October 10, 2001
In Streets of Pakistani Cities, Cries of 'Death to America!'
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
QUETTA, Pakistan, Oct. 8 — Chaudary Umadali stood in the blackened ruins of his movie theater this afternoon, a dignified man trying to make sense of the rage that led to its destruction.
"They broke the windows and came inside with petrol bottles," he said, gazing at puddles of sooty water and shards of glass. "There were a thousand people. They set fire to my cinema" — because it was playing an American film, "Desperado."
Gangs of furious protesters roamed the streets of Quetta today, smashing and burning anything that appeared American or Western on a day when anger over the air strikes on Afghanistan swept Pakistan, the world's second most populous Islamic nation.
The gangs in Quetta, estimated at 10,000 to 15,000 strong by the police, were the most violent. They threw rocks at the headquarters of the United Nations refugee agency near the airport and then set fire to the Unicef office nearby, destroying five cars.
Windows of stores selling Western videos were broken, and two other theaters playing American films were set ablaze with gasoline bombs. Witnesses said a Christian cemetery was desecrated, its crosses pulled from the ground and tossed onto a nearby road.
Smoke from burning buildings and smoldering tires darkened the sky, and gunfire could be heard sporadically. At one point the police fired dozens of canisters of tear gas to beat back a crowd of 300 stick-wielding demonstrators trying to assail a hotel housing foreigners.
By nightfall a 25-year-old Pakistani man had been killed by a bullet and at least 26 people were injured, including several policemen, hospital officials said. Some 300 people were arrested. One police officer was missing, believed to have been taken hostage by demonstrators who attacked the central police station with gasoline bombs.
In the capital, Islamabad, 1,500 students armed with canes and shouting anti-American slogans marched toward the American Center, which was cordoned off by a heavy police presence.
There was a protest in Lahore in the east, and in the southern city of Karachi, pro-Taliban demonstrators blocked streets leading to the business center, burning tires and throwing rocks.
In Landi Kotal, five miles from the Afghan border crossing at Torkham on the Khyber Pass, the local militia opened fire to control about 5,000 Pashtun tribesmen burning an effigy of President George W. Bush. Three protesters were injured.
In Peshawar, an often volatile border city 1,000 miles northeast of Quetta, there were several demonstrations, but none drew more than 1,000 people, and the police controlled the crowds with tear gas.
At one demonstration, near the well-known Madani Mosque, outrage never got past the level of performance art. Men with smiles on their faces chanted hateful slogans and threw rocks, many of their actions seemingly intended to arrest the attention of dozens of foreign journalists starved for images to send home.
At one point a fire was set with an old tire, some scrap wood and paper. "Bush is a dog! Israel is a dog! Russia is a dog!" a small cluster of protesters chanted. The fire burned with little fury. Finally, with extra wood and paper, a strong blaze surged skyward. It was perhaps the most photographed tire in Pakistan.
One rock thrower was Roh Khan, a young Afghan refugee. He was enjoying the game of cat and mouse played by the crowd and the police. But taken aside, he seemed sincere.
"Muslims do not do terrorist acts," he said, denying even the possibility of Osama bin Laden's guilt for the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. "And now what has America done? They have infuriated the Muslim world. Their war against Islam may take one month or one year, but our revenge will last until the end of time."
Khan Wali, 22, a student in a religious school, said he would soon join the fight against America. "I am just waiting for my teachers to give the word," he said. "Fighting the enemies of Islam is my duty. And giving my life, if it comes to that, is a small price to pay for an eternity in paradise."
The modesty of the protests today does not necessarily mean that Peshawar will remain free of trouble. Leaders of local religious political parties are capable of calling out several thousand protesters with barely a day's notice.
The lateness of the air attack on Sunday limited the time to organize a large response. A greater test may come on Tuesday or, as traditionally, on Fridays after afternoon prayers.
In Quetta, the police had all they could handle most of the day. Rock- throwing protesters constantly pelted police vehicles as they threaded through burning tires on the wide boulevards near the bazaars.
Protesters also set fire to buildings, including a major portion of the bazaar where cloth was sold. Smoke billowed into the afternoon sky.
Nearby, young men picked up bricks from a construction site and began to hurl them at an armored police vehicle. The vehicle spun around and a policeman let loose a barrage of teargas canisters.
"We will not back down from America or the Pakistani police," Muhammad Ullah, 26, said as he ran from the gas, covering his face with the flapping end of his turban.
Quetta's day of protests began with a student rally organized by Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, the militant religious party whose leader was placed under house arrest on Sunday. Muhammad Noor, another of the party's leaders, told the crowd, "If there is no peace in Afghanistan, there will be no peace anywhere in the world." The response came in unison: "Death to America!" and "Stop the strikes!"
As the rally ended, the crowd broke up into groups of 40 to 50. They rampaged, breaking windows and threatening shopkeepers who refused to close. Several banks were damaged, including the main office of the National Bank of Pakistan, and cars were set ablaze.
The main city police station was burned, and according to police officials, Tahir Marwat, a subinspector, was kidnapped, with his fate unknown this evening.
Equal mystery surrounded the death of a 25-year-old man. Doctors at the Civil Hospital in Quetta said he had been killed by a single bullet wound, but no one knew who had fired or whether the dead man was a protester or a bystander.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
