Anti-Musharraf Protests Erupt All Over Pakistan as crackdown announced

In the wake of the Red Mosque raid, violent protests have erupted all over Pakistan.

This is Friday, sermon day in the mosques, so one could expect a number of fiery outbursts from the imams to rile up the adherants to the Religion of Peace.

In the north-western city of Peshawar more than 1,000 protesters vowed to avenge the death of the mosque's leader, Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

At Peshawar's Mahabat Khan mosque, imam Maulana Yousaf Qureshi got the crowd to raise their hands if they wanted to avenge Ghazi, and reportedly almost the entire group did so, while chanting in support of Islam and against President Musharraf.

In Lahore, large protests were organized by the good people at Jamaat-ud-Dawa a part of the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba.

"This was genocide, hundreds of innocent women and children died," cleric Mohammad Saeed, the head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa organisation, said.

"This is a challenge for all Muslims and Pakistanis," he told the weekly prayer congregation.

"It is state terrorism, it is extreme brutality and those who killed the innocent will have a horrible fate," he said.

In the capitol Islamabad, large demonstrations were organized by Pakistan's main alliance of radical parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal.

"This carnage will prove to be the last nail in the coffin of Musharraf's dictatorial rule in Pakistan," the group's deputy leader Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Hydri told the gathering.

"Now there will be Red Mosques everywhere in Pakistan."

Now, here's an interesting bit.

First, Musharraf made a speech to the country that had several interesting components.

He said bluntly that no more Lal Masjids ( Red Mosques) will be tolerated and that all madrassas henceforth will be monitored for extremist activities.

"Unfortunately we have been up against our own people... they had strayed from the right path and become susceptible to terrorism."

"What do we want as a nation want?" President Musharraf asked. "What kind of Islam do these people represent?"

"In the garb of Islamic teaching they have been training for terrorism... they prepared the madrassa as a fortress for war and housed other terrorists in there.

"I will not allow any madrassa to be used for extremism."

Musharraf also mentioned that the military would have a beefed up presence in the tribal areas like Waziristan...`to combat extremism'.and the Pakistani English newspaper Dawn is reporting that the army has started deploying troops in the southern districts of North West Frontier Province in areas adjoining the troubled Waziristan region, and that an `operation' to curb al Qaeda and the Taliban is imminent.

Either Washington and the Bush Administration finally laid down the law to Musharraf, or he found out that al-Qaeda and the Taliban were planning to depose him, and figured he might as well take the initiative.

Will he succeed? Stay tuned....