Thousands of jihadists poured onto Islamabad’s streets on February 20 chanting “death to America,” demanding holy war against the West, and heaping scorn on Pakistan’s government. The gathering concerns the U.S. State Department because it represents a coalescing of some 40 anti-American parties—previously at odds with each other—but now unified under a new banner: the Defense of Pakistan Council (dpc).
Among the world-class Islamists who spoke at the dpc rally were Chairman Maulana Sami ul Haq, nicknamed “the Taliban’s spiritual father”; Muhammad Ijaz-Ul-Haq, son of Zia-Ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan until his death in 1988; Fazlur Rehman Khalil, signatory to Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa declaring war against the West, and former head of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, an outlawed Islamist group connected to al Qaeda; Hafiz Abdur Makki, the deputy head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a UN-banned outfit thought to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks; and Abdullah Gul, son of a former leader of Pakistan’s isi intelligence agency.
