Anti-US rallies held in Pakistan protesting ISI-Haqqani link comments

A top US general’s recent statement against the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has sparked anti-American rallies by religious parties in several Pakistani cities.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the departing chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said at a Senate hearing last week that the Haqqani network was “a veritable arm” of the ISI, and that the Pakistani intelligence agency had directed the militant group’s recent attacks at US installations in Kabul.

Pakistani youth, ex-servicemen, civil society and religious groups from all walks of life held countrywide rallies and processions in the ‘defence of the country’ against threatening statements from the United States, The News reports.

Addressing a protest rally at the Lal Masjid after the Friday prayers, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Secretary General Maulana Ghafoor Haideri said that Pakistan is a brave nation and will never compromise on its sovereignty.

About 900 people from an anti-Shia group, whose militant arm has been accused of killing thousands of Pakistani Shias since the 1990s, burned an effigy of US President Barack Obama in Hyderabad and chanted the slogan: “America is a murderer”.

In Lahore, at least 800 people protested at the headquarters of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the country’s largest religious party.

According to the report, at another protest rally by JI in Peshawar that drew around 200 people, a donkey was made to walk over an American flag laid on the road, while the crowd chanted “America’s Graveyard: Waziristan, Waziristan”, referring to the tribal areas on the Pakistani border with Afghanistan that is a hotbed of militant groups.