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Karl Carlile (Communist Global Group)
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Angry Muslims take to streets
By Sayed Salahuddin and Alan Elsner
Click to enlarge photo
KABUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Angry Muslims have taken to the streets after the first
Friday prayers since the U.S. launched military action against Afghanistan.
In the Pakistani city of Karachi, protesters torched cars and exchanged gunshots with
police, witnesses said. There and elsewhere in the country, the only one still to
recognise the Taliban government, police and troops were out in force.
But the turnout in most countries failed to match predictions of organisers as
governments deployed security forces to curb violence -- and contain the protests.
In Afghanistan itself, weary civilians emerged after a fifth night of bombing in an
aerial offensive that the Taliban say has killed nearly 300 people, over half in a
single remote village.
United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, speaking after the world body
won the Nobel Peace Prize, called for a suspension of the air strikes in order to
provide aid to hungry civilians before the onset of winter.
"All I can say is there is a desperate situation for hundreds of thousands -- perhaps
up to two million -- of the Afghan civilian population who desperately need food,"
she said.
"It is absolutely wrong that 6,000 people were killed in the terrible events of
September 11 but equally we must have regard for the population in Afghanistan," she
told Irish state radio.
Friday's protests followed a gesture from U.S. President George W. Bush to the
Taliban protectors of Osama bin Laden, the man he accuses of masterminding the
devastating September 11 suicide hijackings in the United States.
As U.S. planes pounded Taliban targets inside Afghanistan, Bush gave Afghanistan's
rulers a last chance to surrender bin Laden.
At the same time, both Bush and the FBI told Americans to be on their guard against
reprisals at home and abroad over the next few days.
ANTI-AMERICAN PROTESTS
"We are ready to die to defend Islam. Kick out the Americans," Indonesian protesters
chanted following prayers in the capital of the world's largest Muslim country.
Five people were injured on Friday in a protest in Indonesia's second city of
Surabaya, witnesses said.
In Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, they burnt effigies of Bush.
In the Philippines, they chanted "Death to Americans" -- as the U.S. embassy
confirmed a U.S. tourist kidnapped by Muslim rebels linked to bin Laden in June had
been killed.
But as rain started falling, they called of plans to march on the U.S. embassy.
In Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur, police broke up a protest with water cannon --
laced with an eye irritant.
Bush, speaking one month after suicide squads killed more than 5,000 Americans and
other nationals by slamming hijacked airliners into landmarks in the United States,
said the Taliban could still stop the military offensive.
"You still have a second chance. Just bring him (bin Laden) in and bring his leaders
and lieutenants and other thugs and criminals with him," he told a Thursday news
conference.
"If you cough him up and his people today we'll reconsider what we're doing to your
country."
Bin Laden and the Taliban, who have been sheltering him since the mid-1990s, say Bush
has launched a crusade against Islam and have urged Mulsims round the world to rally
to their defence.
U.S. RAIDS
Bush said the bombing campaign, which involved missiles fired by British submarines
on Sunday, was going to plan.
"We're mounting a sustained campaign to drive the terrorists out of their hidden
caves and to bring them to justice," he said.
U.S. defence officials said B-52 and B-1 bombers had targeted Taliban troops with
cluster bombs.
In the capital Kabul, a dozen strong explosions rocked the city, hitting a munitions
dump that exploded like a fireworks display. Residents cowered in their homes, unable
to flee due to a nightly curfew and the fear of being hit by U.S. bombs.
The Taliban said before Thursday night's raids that the bombing runs and missile
strikes had killed more than 200 people.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said on Friday that the death toll in
an eastern village hit by bombs had risen.
"So far 160 bodies have been recovered and most of them were children and women," AIP
quoted a Taliban spokesman in the eastern city of Jalalabad as saying.
U.S. officials say Jalalabad has long been surrounded by bin Laden training camps, a
prime target of the U.S. raids.
Taliban officials said on Thursday 15 people were killed when a mosque was hit in
Surkhrod in the suburbs of Jalalabad.
The head of the Taliban Bakhtiar news agency said dozens of people had been killed or
wounded in overnight raids in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban
powerbase.
The air raids have forced frightened city residents to flee their homes for the
relative security of the countryside or to head for neighbouring Pakistan and Iran.
HEARTS AND MINDS
Fleeing residents of the city of Kandahar said in Pakistan that Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar's 10-year-old son and stepfather both died in earlier U.S. raids there.
The Taliban leader had just left the house before it was hit, they added.
The Taliban said on Thursday that bin Laden and Mullah Omar, were alive and well.
Bush, who referred to bin Laden as "the evil one," said he did not know either way.
Bush, who insists that Washington is not at war with the Afghan people, called on
every child in America to donate one dollar to help a child in Afghanistan.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's staunchest ally in his war on terrorism,
has been criss-crossing the globe to cement support for their coalition and win
Muslim hearts and minds.
He acknowledged that Western countries were in danger of losing the propaganda battle
for Arab and Muslim support.
Neither Bush nor the FBI gave specifics on likely reprisals.
"Certain information, while not specific as to target, gives the government reason to
believe that there may be additional terrorist attacks within the United States and
against U.S. interests overseas over the next several days," the FBI said.
The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a bill to expand the powers of law enforcement to
wiretap suspected terrorists, share intelligence information about them, track their
Internet movements and prosecute those who knowingly harbour them.
The House of Representatives was expected to approve similar legislation on Friday.
The Senate also approved legislation to toughen U.S. laws against money laundering as
part of the war on terrorism. The new law will give the U.S. Treasury powers to
target foreign banks or countries deemed to present a major money-laundering threat.
With the Afghan winter approaching, the U.N. World Food Programme said it was racing
against time to send food into the impoverished and drought-racked nation.
"It is one of the most difficult tasks WFP has faced in its history. The harsh winter
is approaching and many human lives are at stake," WFP spokesman Francesco Luna said
in Islamabad.
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