IRAQ: War on Everyone’s Minds on Afghan-Pakistani Border

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Christopher Nadeem

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Apr 1 2003 (IPS) - In this town on the border with Afghanistan, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is on everybody’s minds – whether it is Pakistanis, Islamic leaders or refugees who not too long ago saw U.S. bombs rain on their country, Afghanistan.

The biggest rallies were held here over the weekend, and news reports put at up to 150,000 the number of protesters who flocked Monday to the demonstrations in this city, capital of the North West Frontier Province ruled by an alliance of religious parties in Pakistan.

A sea of rallyists pledged to ”destroy” America, carrying posters of Osama bin Laden, the man suspected by the United States of being behind the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks.

Those attacks brought the U.S.-led military attacks to Afghanistan next door in October 2001. The pursuit by U.S. soldiers, with Pakistani help, of al Qaeda members continues to this day – clashes are said to have stepped up in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in recent days.

That U.S. intervention has not made Washington any more popular here, especially with the invasion of Iraq that began Mar.20.

"It’s not the weapons of mass destruction or the brutalities of Saddam (Hussein), as the U.S. portrays, but rather the strategic and political influence in the Middle East that determines U.S. actions,” says Adnan Sarwar, chairman of the international relations department of Peshawar University.

”By reshaping the political map of the region the U.S. will undoubtedly be in a commanding position even against Iran, another anti-U.S. state in the region," he adds, even as reports quoted U.S. officials as warning Iran Monday about acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The perception that the United States is moving against Islamic status reverberates strongly and stirs emotions here on the border with Afghanistan, even if most peace advocates against the war elsewhere in Pakistan do not view it along the lines of religion.

Khadimullah Khan, a small grocery store owner in the cantonment area, maintained: "This is a war between ‘kafir’ (infidel) and Islam. Saddam invited America’s wrath because he has refused to bow against its might."

On Monday, the leader of the Mutahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), the six-party religious alliance in that rules NFWP. called on Muslims to fight the United States both in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the weekend rallies, some protesters called on Muslim countries to unite and stop oil supplies to the United States and suspend trade ties with the Washington.

In his sermon during Friday prayers last week, Qari Fiaz ur Rehman, a parliamentarian and a leader of religious party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, argued that the U.S. attack against Iraq was a conspiracy against the Islamic world.

"President Bush is the biggest terrorist because he has no justification to attack Iraq. U.S. forces are killing innocent civilians daily. Its bombs killed thousands of innocent Afghans in 2001 and now they are killing Iraqis. Soon it will be Iranians or Pakistanis; all Muslims," he said.

Some Afghan refugees living in NWFP meantime say that they see the war on Iraq will only hurt civilians.

Sanaullah, an Afghan refugee running a carpet shop in Shuba Bazaar, says, "I know from more than 20 years of experience that war only brings suffering. The bombs do not make distinction between soldiers, women and children.”

”Whatever the outcome, everybody knows there will be more widows, orphaned children, broken and displaced families,” adds Sanaullah, one of some 1.8 million Afghan refugees still here in this Pakistani border town.

Like him, many Afghans, though not sorry to see the Taliban regime fall, distrust the United States.

Many say that western interest in the reconstruction of Afghanistan is falling, and that the little sympathy that they had for the United States started evaporating when Washington turned its guns toward Iraq.

It is not out of love for Iraqis that the United States wants to get rid of Saddam Hussein, one refugee explains.

Naveed Ahmed, a 22-year-old refugee in Peshawar who runs a tailor shop, came to Pakistan four years back. His understanding of the matter is simple: "The U.S. does not want to see Islam flourish, that’s why it is taking on Islamic countries one by one. The U.S. wants to control all Arab countries for their oil wealth."

These are some of the sentiments commonly found here, and protest rallies have now almost a daily routine. They are likely to grow in number and size as the bombardment takes toll on civilian population in Iraq, highlighted by the bombs that have fallen on markets in Baghdad and the killing of seven women and children in a car that U.S. soldiers fired upon at a checkpoint.

Meantime too, there are signs that the Taliban sees the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as an opportunity to plug into anti-war sentiment.

Last week, Commander Mullah Dadullah, a senior member of the Taliban militia that used to run Afghanistan, was reported to have given the organisation’s first interview since its collapse in December 2001. He said he spoke to the British Broadcasting Corp to because rising anti-U.S. sentiment in Afghanistan made the right time to challenge the United States.

Mullah Dadullah said the Taliban had regrouped under the leadership of its supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and were now attacking U.S. troops with renewed vigour and ferocity.

Clashes have been reported with U.S. solders in south-eastern Afghanistan in the last few days.