Tellingly, Pakistan's religious parties have not traditionally done well at the ballot box, but they wield considerable influence on the streets.
'The country's political and military leadership should immediately resign as they have failed to ensure the country's integrity,' said Fareed Ahmed Paracha, a senior leader of the biggest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, at a rally in the eastern city of Lahore. 'This is an attack on Pakistan's sovereignty.'
About 1,500 people demonstrated near the city of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province in the southwest, saying more figures like Bin Laden would arise to wage holy war against the United States. 'Jihad (holy war) against America will not stop with the death of Osama,' said cleric Fazal Mohammad Baraich, amid shouts of 'Down with America'. 'Osama Bin Laden is a shaheed (martyr). The blood of Osama will give birth to thousands of other Osamas.'
Anti-American sentiment is running high and the U.S. war on militancy is unpopular in Pakistan because of the high civilian deaths from drone attacks against "suspected militants" along the Afghan border and the feeling they are a violation of the country's sovereignty.
On Friday, US resumed drone attacks after a brief lull. At least 15 persons were killed and four others injured in the latest United States drone attack in North Waziristan. The drones fired six missiles at a seminary and two missiles at a car parked in a hotel in Datta Khel area of North Waziristan tribal region, TV channel Express reported.
Friday's strike also is the 26th of its kind since 2011. To date, over 180 people have reportedly been killed in the 26 strikes launched by the U.S. drones since the beginning of this year.
Tail End
I have been reading dozens of articles and analysis on Osama Bin Laden's killing episode but would like to share one comment by Paul Craig Roberts, a former editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.
Under the headline: The Agendas Behind the Bin Laden News Event, Roberts writes:
"When such a foundational story as the demise of bin Laden cannot last 48 hours without acknowledged "discrepancies" that require fundamental alternations to the story, there are grounds for suspicion in addition to the suspicions arising from the absence of a dead body, from the absence of any evidence that bin Laden was killed in the raid or that a raid even took place. The entire episode could just be another event like the August 4, 1964, Gulf of Tonkan event that never happened but succeeded in launching open warfare against North Vietnam at a huge cost to Americans and Vietnamese and enormous profits to the military/security complex--
"The real question before us is: What agenda or agendas is the "death of bin Laden" designed to further?
"There are many answers to this question. Many have noticed that Obama was facing re-election with poor approval ratings. Is anyone surprised that the New York Times/CBS Poll finds a strong rise in Obama's poll numbers after the bin Laden raid? As the New York Times reported, "the glow of national pride" rose "above partisan politics, as support for the president rose significantly among both Republicans and Independents. In all, 57 percent said they now approved of the president's job performance, up from 46 percent.
"In Washington-think, a 24-percent rise in approval rating justifies a staged event.
"Another possibility is that Obama realized that the budget deficit and the dollar's rescue from collapse require the end of the expensive Afghan war and occupation and spillover war into Pakistan. As the purpose of the war was to get bin Laden, success in this objective allows the US to withdraw without loss of face, thus making it possible to reduce the US budget deficit by several hundred billion dollars annually -- an easy way to have a major spending cut."
Various parts of the government quickly seized on the success in killing bin Laden to defend and advance their own agendas, such as torture, Paul Roberts said adding: Americans were told that bin Laden was found as a result of information gleaned from torturing detainees held in Eastern European CIA secret prisons years ago.
This listing of possible agendas and add-on agendas is far from complete, but for those capable of skepticism and independent thought, it can serve as a starting point, he concluded.
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