Afghanistan turns a corner

For much of the past month, this busy corner of Islamabad's Aabpara market has been pulsating with thousands of furious Muslim conservatives, who burned effigies of President George Bush. Today, guava fruit sells better than posters of Osama bin Laden.

"Some people are very angry, but the whole of Pakistan is not angry about the change in the war," says Fraz Afzal, a Pakistani student gripping several computer textbooks. Now that the bombing has eased and the Taliban are on the run, he says, the Islamic fundamentalists have lost their vaunted heroes. "The Taliban are supposed to be fighting against the world, but they are escaping to the hills." He smirks. "This is not called fighting."

Across the Muslim world and beyond, there is a mixture of audible relief and subtle foreboding. In the international media, scenes of Afghan civilians in hospital beds have been replaced by portraits of jubiliant Afghan wedding parties and beard shaving.

In Europe, where public support for the war was slipping, Prime Minister Tony Blair is now receiving plaudits. In Germany, the turn of events is likely to sway the handful of pacifists who

were threatening to bring down the coalition government in a no-confidence vote today.

In Egypt, political moderates hope the government may now ease its restrictions on public expression. But in parts of the Middle East - Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq - there's concern that the war on terrorism may be heading their way.

Here in Pakistan, the apparent rout of the Taliban, and the scaling back of American bombing, have put a damper on the weekly anti-American street protests. But there's still concern that the political unrest in Pakistan won't fade away as quickly as the Taliban took to the hills.

In fact, there are clear signs that pro-Taliban or other religious extremist groups will continue their opposition to what they consider a hard-hearted anti-Muslim policy of America and her allies.

"The danger is now for Pakistan, because we'll have these [groups] to deal with," says a senior Pakistani military official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They will be very surly, they will have weapons, they will have a friendly population in the madrassas [religious schools], and you'll never know how many there are. That's why it's very important that the United Nations and the US be very careful not to annoy the tribal people of Pakistan."

Indeed, few nations have experienced the public anger over this war more than Pakistan, Afghanistan's southern neighbor. With their 2,500-mile border and common religious, ethnic, and family ties with their Afghan neighbors, many Pakistanis violently opposed Pakistan's decision to join the US-led coalition against the Taliban. A relentless one-month-long American bombing campaign - seen here on daily TV broadcast of civilian casualties in Kabul and Jalalabad - broadened the field of protest to include middle-class professionals, a troubling sign for the stability of the regime of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

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