"Three Killed in Massive Cartoon Protests," by Riaz Khan - AP (Peshawar, Pakistan), 15 Feb 2006, as posted to Forbes.com
Gunfire and rioting erupted Wednesday as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Pakistan's third straight day of violent protests over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons. Three people were killed, including an 8-year-old boy.
The European Union condemned both the cartoons, first printed in a Danish newspaper in September, and what it called "systematic incitement to violence" against European diplomatic missions by some unidentified governments.
Pakistani intelligence officials have said members of outlawed Islamic militant groups have joined the protests, and may be inciting violence to undermine the government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Rioting also broke out Wednesday near the South Waziristan tribal region, where security officials have said foreign fighters linked to al-Qaida are hiding.
A senior police official said they were investigating whether the rioting was planned. He said the main spark for the violence in the northwestern city of Peshawar appeared to be riots Tuesday in Lahore, where two people were killed.
More than 70,000 people flooded the streets of Peshawar, said Saeed Wazir, a senior police officer. The huge crowd went on a rampage, torching businesses and fighting police who struck back with tear gas and batons. A bus terminal operated by South Korea's Sammi Corp. was torched, police said.
Protesters also burned a KFC restaurant, three movie theaters and the offices of the main mobile phone company. A Norwegian mobile phone company's offices were also ransacked. Gunfire was heard near the burning KFC, as police tried to clear people from a main street, witnesses said....
"The European newspapers have abused our religion," said demonstrator Shaukat Khan, his eyes streaming from tear gas. "We are expressing our anger. Usually protesters are peaceful but some miscreants do bad things and other people join them."
Paramilitary forces were deployed, and the government announced that schools and colleges would be closed in northwestern Pakistan for a week to protect students. Authorities also announced an indefinite ban on rallies in eastern Pakistan. Most shops, public transport and other businesses were shut....
"A Day of Shame in Lahore" (editorial) - the Daily Times (Pakistan), 16 Feb 2006
There was mob rule in the streets of Lahore on Tuesday after the provincial government allowed the “ulema” of 22 organisations under the banner of Tahaffuz-e-Namoos-e-Rasalat Mahaz (Front for the Protection of the Honour of the Prophet (peace be upon him)) to stage a protest march in Lahore against Denmark in particular and Europe and the West in general. If the government ignored the verbal violence of the Mahaz leaders over the past months it did so at its own risk. The citizens of Lahore had to pay for it. The damage the city suffered could be compared only to the mayhem of 1977, which led to the toppling of the government in power.
Thousands of youths from schools and colleges, still clad in uniforms and some carrying their satchels, stormed Faisal Chowk, while groups of 35 to 50 youngsters staged separate protests all over the city. Over 400 markets and business centres in the city were already closed to observe a strike called by religious groups and opposition parties and backed by trade associations. The demonstrators shouted slogans denouncing President Pervez Musharraf, President George Bush and European leaders. They burnt tyres and piles of wood on roads and chowks across the city. They also tore down large posters of General Musharraf and the visiting Bangladeshi prime minister.
On the Mall rioters torched hundreds of cars and motorcycles and damaged government buildings and private businesses. Outlets of foreign fast food companies McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut as well as several local restaurants and businesses were attacked and set on fire. Several shops and travel agencies were broken into and looted. The demonstrators entered the Punjab Assembly and torched a room next to the opposition leader’s chamber. After that they moved on to the PIA building and damaged its front. They attacked the Holiday Inn on Egerton Road and the nearby Aiwan-e-Iqbal, smashing windows and burning cars. On the Mall, Dayal Singh Mansions came in for thorough destruction. The blaze at the KFC restaurant spread to the upper stories of the Co-opera Art Gallery, a Muslim Commercial Bank branch, a National Bank branch, and a Telenor franchise. The mob had earlier set fire to a petrol station there....
Intelligence sources told Daily Times that the chain of violent incidents was orchestrated by a group of trained young activists of religious organisations. Activists belonging to the student wing (sic!) of Jamaat ud Da’wa (formerly known as Lashkar-e-Tayba), Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba and Shabab-e-Milli of Jamaat-e-Islami gave the destruction a professional touch. Groups of at least 35 men each carried out most of the violence, including burning and ransacking of buildings across Lahore. The main group travelled around in a maroon jeep and motorcycles, and most of its members had long hair, beards and were clad in commando uniforms. The Jamaat ud Da’wa flag hung from the jeep and motorcycles. All of them were trained and many had been summoned to Lahore from other cities. They were armed with petrol bombs, firecrackers, small weapons and a fire accelerant....
The protests are clearly aimed at bringing the Musharraf regime down. Will the ruling party still try to shake hands with elements whose real intent is no longer disguised?
In their attempt to be holier than the mullahs, the Chaudhrys of Gujrat have lost their bearings. It is time General Musharraf knocked some sense into them. This sort of nonsense cannot be allowed to continue to hurt the nation-state.
"Riots Put Pressure at Home on Musharraf," by Salman Masood (in Islamabad) - the International Herald Tribune, 15 Feb 2006
President Pervez Musharraf was under increasing pressure Wednesday as tens of thousands of protesters again took to the streets to assail cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and the political opposition tried to turn the violence against the government.
"The government has failed to represent the emotions of the masses against the cartoons," charged Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, an opposition member of Parliament.
The police and media reported that three people had been killed. Additionally, three Chinese engineers were killed in a remote tribal region of southwestern Pakistan only days before Musharraf was scheduled to visit China, which, with the United States, is one of his closest allies.
The wave of violence, which flared Monday in Islamabad and Lahore, shifted back Wednesday to the northwestern city of Peshawar, close to the Afghan border, where thousands of demonstrators caused havoc in marketplaces, vandalizing property and battling with police officers.
The protests have become enmeshed with Pakistani politics as opposition political parties and Islamic groups opposed to Musharraf have led the public outcry and directed anger over the cartoons into denunciation of Musharraf's alliance with the West....
Protests over the cartoons have become increasingly intense in Pakistan, a country where religious matters have traditionally generated strong emotions and where anti-Western sentiment has grown steadily since Musharraf decided to side with the United States in its fight against terrorism.
Blasphemy is a sensitive issue here and perceived slights to Islam have been the cause of violent demonstrations and killings in the past.
Under the Pakistani penal code, desecration of the Koran is punishable by life imprisonment. Any insult to the Prophet Muhammad can also be punishable by death.
The protesters have demanded the expulsion of European ambassadors and the cutting of diplomatic ties with countries where the cartoons have been published.
They have also vented their anger against the Musharraf government. Opposition Islamist and political parties have accused the government of a timid response to the controversy. Portraits of Musharraf were ripped up Tuesday in Islamabad by students....
Added 16 Feb 2006:
"Pakistani Rally Huge but Peaceful," by Zarar Khan - AP (Karachi), 16 Feb 2006
Thousands of people shouting "God is Great!" marched through a southern Pakistan city on Thursday and burned effigies of the Danish prime minister in the country's fourth day of protests over cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, police said.
About 5,000 police and paramilitary forces, wearing helmets and wielding guns and shields, were deployed along the two-mile route of the rally to prevent the violence that has plagued other protests throughout the country this week, said Mushtaq Shah, chief of police operations in the southern city of Karachi.
About 40,000 people took part in the demonstration, which ended peacefully, said Shahnawaz Khan, a senior Karachi police officer....
Also see:
"Hidden Motives Behind Cartoon Riots," by Aamer Ahmed Khan (in Karachi) - BBC News, 15 Feb 2006
Several people have died in Pakistan in continuing violence over the publication in the West of cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad. But some targets seem far removed from the cartoon row....
[F]ew seem convinced the riots are either spontaneous or driven purely by public indignation at the satirical cartoons.
For one, most of the public and private property attacked by the rioters cannot even remotely be linked to the cartoons.
The buildings burned in Lahore and Peshawar included cinemas, a theatre, banks, mobile phone outlets, fast food restaurants, the Punjab assembly building, petrol stations, music and video shops.
Most of the vehicles set alight were motorbikes, which are owned mostly by lower middle class people.
Such targets have nothing to do with the cartoons but have historically been the target of choice for religious activists whenever they have had a reason to take to the streets.
Why motorbikes and cars? Because they are readily available - parked on roadsides and unprotected - burn easily and provide the media with fiery images.
Cinemas, fast food joints and banks are also targeted because they represent entertainment, US economic interests and the interest-based Western financial system.
Attacking such properties makes for a powerful statement of the cultural agenda pursued by almost every Pakistani religious organisation.
Pakistani observers point out that while the protests may have done little to bring the alleged blasphemers under pressure they have certainly conveyed the destructive potential of injured religious sentiment to the outside world.
"Is this the image of ourselves that we want to paint for the outside world?" Punjab Chief Minister Pervez Ellahi asked of the riots in Lahore.
"Are we trying to convince the West that Muslims are indeed violent people?"
Maybe not, but perhaps Pakistan's religious leadership may not be averse to the idea of demonstrating to the world that Pakistanis remain a deeply religious people despite Gen Musharraf's liberal rhetoric.
And if demonstrating this requires arson and looting, it may be a small price in the mind of the country's religious leadership for emphasising an orthodox cultural agenda which has been under consistent pressure since the September 2001 attacks on the US....
Added 17 Feb 2006:
"Pakistani Riots About More Than Cartoons," by David Montero (in Islamabad) - the Christian Science Monitor, 17 Feb 2006
...Over the past week, Islam and religious fervor have been fingered as the source of the spreading violence [in Pakistan]. But to some analysts, the erratic nature of the demonstrations points to different root causes.
The flash conflagrations, they argue, highlight a profound discontent in Paki-stan over economic and social inequality that has deepened over the past five years, sparking alienation and resentment.
While the attacks on Western restaurants, cars, and banks have been read as an attack on the West, those targets are potent symbols simply of privilege and status that is beyond the reach of much of Pakistan's population.
"In Western society, only the common man eats at KFC. But in Pakistan, these are eateries of the most privileged," says Rasul Bakhsh Rai, a professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences....
While some of the agitation was in fact directed toward the cartoons, religious leaders and secular analysts agree that the ensuing violence has little to do with religious offenses committed far away, and more to do with grievances at home.
"There was no religious component to the violence," says Kamila Hyat, joint director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, based in Lahore. "All the violence was influenced by small groups of boys who were not moved by the blasphemy issue."
Others express doubt that those participating in the destruction were even aware of the blasphemy issue. Instead, they say, many participants took the opportunity to express an otherwise stifled but roiling sense of frustration.
"The whole thing was initiated because of the cartoons," says Nauman Wazir, president of the Industrialists' Association of Peshawar. "Then it was hijacked by some elements - schoolboys, people sitting idle - who also wanted to be a part of it. They have forgotten what the cause is."
But youthful discontent alone cannot be blamed, religious leaders and other analysts are quick to point out. Both on and off the record, many say the involvement of state intelligence agencies in fomenting the violence cannot be discounted. The current administration, some argue, is trying to spread panic about religious extremists in a bid to hold on to power.
"Maybe [President Pervez] Musharraf is trying to create a situation where he says to [US President George] Bush, 'Look, I'm sitting on dynamite with these mullahs and I'm the only one who can contain them,' " says Zarafullah Khan, director of the Center for Civic Education in Islamabad.
There is no proof of such activity, but observers say a weak police response is suggestive of state approval. The police in Lahore have been widely criticized for their failure to quell the violence, with many saying police did little to intervene. Mian Ameer Mahmood, the district nazim of Lahore, roughly equivalent to a mayor, denied the accusations: "I am on the record that police were not present at the time when people were burning buildings."
Such a tepid response contrasts sharply with last month's controversial marathon in Lahore, observers say, where thousands of police were deployed to prevent disruptions. It also contrasts with reports of armed troops stationed on rooftops and roadsides of Karachi Thursday, where 50,000 demonstrators rallied peacefully against the cartoons.
Further protests are expected to mount in coming days, culminating in a nationwide protest on March 3 to coincide with the arrival of President Bush. Leaders of Jamaat Islami hope the demonstrations will be peaceful, although they cannot account for how some outside their party will act. "Ensure we cannot. We don't have the police and army with us," says Mr. Hasan. "Even then, our experience tells us that we've always been successful in organizing peacefully."
"Pakistan Detains Islamic Firebrand, 150 Others, Ahead of Protests" - AFP (Islamabad), 17 Feb 2006
Pakistani police have put a firebrand Islamic leader under house arrest and detained nearly 150 others as violent new protests against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed broke out.
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of the militant Lashkar-e-Taiba outfit fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, was held on Friday to stop him giving a sermon on the controversy after Friday prayers, his spokesman Yahya Mujahid told AFP.
The arrests came as police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse around 2,000 protesters who blocked a major highway and threw stones at buses in the country's largest city Karachi.
Pakistan has strengthened security across the country in a bid to stop a number of demonstrations planned in several cities from turning into a repeat of this week's bloody anti-Western riots....
A coalition of opposition groups including Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party have called for a demonstration in Rawalpindi while hardline Islamists planned to rally in the eastern city of Lahore....
After weeks of low-key protests in Pakistan, unrest flared Tuesday when students stormed a diplomatic enclave in Islamabad and thousands of rioters rampaged through Lahore, trashing US fast food outlets and leaving two people dead.
On Wednesday 50,000 demonstrators flooded the streets of the northwestern city of Peshawar, torching a KFC restaurant and the offices of a Norwegian mobile phone firm. Two people died there and another in Lahore that day.
A rally called by religious parties on Thursday in Karachi drew 35,000 people but it passed off peacefully, leading officials to hope that the violence was dying down.
"Papers Urge Defiance Over Cartoon Riots" (media report) - BBC News, 16 Feb 2006. (I've excluded a number of newspaper quotes from the report that talked about the Danish cartoons without saying anything specific about the protests.)
Pakistani newspapers call on the government to take a tough stance and defend Muslim values as violent protests continue over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Several call on the United Nations to intervene and warn that failure to pacify the Muslim world could further exacerbate the crisis.
One English-language daily, which suggests that the protests are a reaction to the government's pro-Western policy, calls for a firm response, warning that Muslim extremists could hijack the issue to promote their religious agenda....
It is incontrovertible that an element of anger against the government for its support for the US, seen as an aggressor in Iraq and Afghanistan and the spearhead of a crusade against Islam, and for its efforts to project a liberal image is present in the current protests ... All violence now needs to be controlled with firmness ... The hurt and outrage felt by Muslims at the blasphemous cartoons published in European countries is in danger of being pushed into the background by the wave of destruction that has engulfed us. - Dawn
The cartoons involved have handed Muslim extremists with a new issue on a platter. A fresh opportunity has been provided to give a religious turn to what is essentially a political issue - America's colonial obsession with controlling the world and its readiness to transgress all lines and borders in pursuit of its aggressive intent. Trying to prevent this needs wisdom, a sense of responsibility and courage rather than the foolhardiness of burning buildings and looting shops. - [also from] Dawn
Added 18 Feb 2006:
"Pakistan Bans Rallies in Capital Amid Cartoon Row," by Asim Tanveer - Reuters (Multan, Pakistan), 18 Feb 2006
Pakistan banned demonstrations in the capital Islamabad on Saturday as protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad grew and four people were wounded when shots were fired during a rally in a central town.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the ban would apply to a protest planned on Sunday by Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the country's main Islamist alliance.
"MMA leaders have been told that protests and rallies will not be allowed in Islamabad," he told a news conference
But MMA said its protest would go ahead.
"The rally will be held in Islamabad. It will be a peaceful rally," Shahid Shamsi, an MMA spokesman said.
Five people have been killed in Pakistan this week during violent demonstrations against satirical cartoons lampooning the Prophet that have enraged Muslims across the world. First published in Denmark, the drawings have been reprinted by newspapers in European countries and elsewhere.
Four people were wounded on Saturday when shots were fired during a protest over the cartoons in the town of Chiniot in central province of Punjab, police said.
The shooting occurred as hundreds of protesters pelted police with stones and tried to block a road in the town. It was unclear whether police or protesters fired the shots....
"Denmark Closes Embassy, Pakistan Recalls Envoy" - the Daily Times (Pakistan), 18 Feb 2006
Denmark temporarily shut its embassy in Islamabad and Pakistan recalled its envoy from Copenhagen on Friday, as violent protests against caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) sparked a diplomatic row.
Copenhagen said its embassy staff would remain in Pakistan, but not in the embassy and denied that diplomatic ties were affected.
“We decided on Friday to shut our embassy for security reasons, because we believe it is not responsible to keep it open at the moment,” Lars Thuesen, head of the Danish Foreign Ministry’s crisis centre, said. “Diplomatic relations have not been severed.”...
Pakistan cited the caricatures issue in its decision to recall its ambassador, but did not explicitly link it to the shutdown of the Danish mission.
“Pakistan’s ambassador in Copenhagen, Mr Javed A Qureshi, has been called to Islamabad for consultations over the caricatures controversy,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
Government officials said the decision was made during a meeting between senior Pakistani Foreign Ministry officials and the Danish ambassador in Islamabad, Bent Wigotski, at the ministry on Friday. staff report.