Bombs are driving youth into the arms of Bin Laden
Lahore is one of the most
overcrowded cities in the world, with over 100,000 people per square mile. This
compares with 1000 people per square mile in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
From dawn to dusk the streets pulsate to the rhythm of roaring exhausts and
blasting horns. You can taste the pollution.
But today the streets are eerily silent and the air is fresh and clean. The
religious fundamentalist parties have declared a national one day ‘wheel-jam
strike’ in which traffic is to be brought to a standstill and shops and other
businesses close down for the day.
But to confuse matters, General Musharaf has launched his own pre-emptive strike
and declared a national holiday.
At every junction along The Mall – the main road that runs through Central Lahore
– stand cordons of armed police, with riot shields, sticks and tin helmets.
There are sporadic incidents across the city throughout. Some vehicles which
have defied the strike are stoned. Some buses have had their windscreens smashed.
Outside the Panorama Shopping Centre, there is a brief altercation, when religious
activists try to close down the market. The market traders here have decided
to remain open and stand defiantly at the front entrance. The police move in
and the fundamentalists move off before any serious clashes erupt.
There is a huge turnout at the central mosque for afternoon prayers. On the
street outside, row after row of men kneel in prayer while young police officers
nervously fidget with their kalashnikovs.
At the end of prayers some of the worshippers gather outside. In Urdu they chant
‘We are the workers of Osama, We are with Osama’ and ‘America is no superpower,
the only superpower is Allah’.
At this officers of the special elite anti-terrorist squad - whose uniforms
are emblazoned with the slogan ‘No Fear’ – move in and arrest the ringleaders.
They are charged with chanting anti-government slogands and inciting others
to do the same.
Many of the younger protesters then turn on the police with stones and rocks.
But it is an uneven contest. The elite commando squad chase the youth down a
narrow sidestreet. They look ready to turn their guns on the protesters.
In another part of the Punjab, protesters have blocked the highway and the railroad
that runsd between Lahore and Quetta. There the police do use their guns, shooting
four protesters dead. But here in Lahore, by sheer weight of numbers, they manage
to take back control of the streets without any killings.
As the eruption of violence subsides, the News Editor of The Nation, one of
Pakistan’s biggest daily newspapers, insists that the religious fundamentalist
parties speak only for a tiny minority of the population.
" Most people are against the bombing of Afghanistan because innocent people
are being killed. But nly a minority support the Taliban. There are seven million
people in this city, but the fundamentalists can only mobilise maybe ten thousand
people on the streets at most," he tells me.
He acknowledges that in the provinces bordering Afghanisatn, the North Wset
Frontier Province and Baluchistan, the religious parties are more powerful.
"But in the Punjab, most people are quite liberal in their interpretation of
Islam."
His assessment is probably accurate, but with every new report of innocent lives
snuffed out by American bombs, the greater the sympathy for the Taliban.
Those hurling rocks at the police today in Lahore were not bearded mullahs,
but teenage boys from the backstreet slums.
In six months time, if the war in Afghanistan is still raging, it may not be
quite so easy for the police to regain control of the streets.