News from our friend and ally, from AP, with thanks to Twostellas:
MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan – A bomb exploded in a town bazaar near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan on Friday, damaging several music and video shops, days after purported militants circulated pamphlets warning against selling such goods.
Also Friday, about 5,000 supporters of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a radical opposition Islamic group, staged a rally in the same town, Miran Shah. They chanted anti-US slogans and demanded Pakistani security forces end military operations against militants in the region.
The explosion before dawn at Garai bazaar smashed windows, doors and goods at about 10 shops, many of which sold TV sets, audio and video cassettes and rented out music and movie CDs, an intelligence official in Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan tribal region, said on condition of anonymity. No one was hurt.
There was no one claimed responsibility, but five days earlier, pamphlets in the name of “Al Qaeda and Taleban groups” had been circulated in the town, telling all video rental shops and stores selling television sets, audio and video cassette players to close or risk attack.
The pamphlets, in Pakistan’s main Urdu-language, also warned hotel owners against having TVs in rooms or showing movies to their guests, the official said.
At Friday”s rally, which passed off peacefully, supporters of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a radical Islamic group, chanted “Death to America” and “Death to (President Gen. Pervez) Musharraf.” They also burned an effigy of US President George W. Bush.
“We do not have Taleban or Al Qaeda here,” said Maulana Dindar, a leader of the protest.
Maybe not, but what you have doesn’t seem all that much different.