The battle to frame the battle

In Jordan on Sunday, just before the US military strikes began, Jordanian newspapers carried stories that officials had uncovered a plot by bin Laden's followers to assassinate Jordan's King Abdullah and his family. The release of the report seemed timed to bolstering support for Sunday night's retaliation in Afghanistan by letting Jordanian's know that their well-liked royal family was also under threat by bin Laden.

But public support for the US and British attacks was in short supply, and many said that discomfort over Washington's campaign to destroy terrorism could easily turn to rage at what many in the Arab world see as hypocrisy.

In a leading Jordanian paper, al-Rayeh, a political cartoon showed a US airplane over Afghanistan: it was dropped food out of one side of the plane, and missiles out of the other.

"What does Bush think, he is taking the terrorist in his hands? There are millions more like him," says Hazem Momani, a Jordanian politician, of Osama bin Laden. Though things are calm in Jordan because the country is under a security clampdown - Islamic militant groups have been outlawed - Mr. Momani says he's not sure the quiet will last.

In Pakistan, moves by President Pervez Musharraf to shore up his support within the country's military and police forces suggested divisions in this crucial country bordering Afghanistan are reaching into official ranks.

With concern over Pakistan's stability and the street reaction growing, Bush has ordered Secretary of State Colin Powell to visit Pakistan and India later this week.

President Musharraf ousted the powerful chief of his national intelligence agencies and installed Peshawar's own chief of military intelligence, General Ehsanul Haq. The move was seen by political analysts here as only the start of an advancing purge of suspected Taliban sympathizers in Pakistan's security services.

On the streets, a call to arms rang out Monday as outrage spilled onto dirt roads and city squares up and down Pakistan's North Western Frontier province. Dozens of protesters were arrested and about ten were seriously injured in the clashes.

But cries for a "holy war" against the Americans and the state of Pakistan appeared to sputter early in the day under the yoke of brute Pakistani police force despite attempts to burn and loot some banks and office building in the southern city of Quetta.

Frontier constabulary forces kept their distance from a massive anti-American demonstration in the often-lawless "tribal districts" west of Peshawar along the Afghan border. An estimated 50,000 religious students and tribesmen blocked the Kohat-Rawalpindi road chanting anti-American slogans and calling for supporters to join the fight against the US and its allies.

"The US by its actions is converting us all into fundamentalists," says Mohamad Ali Saban, who led a group of twenty angry students towards the gate of Peshawar University, which was ordered closed for three days. "What Osama is saying goes to the heart of our religion. We are liberal minded people but when the West behaves like this, we will stand with him."

Page: 1 | 2 | 3