'We Do Not Need Them'; Islamist groups take a high profile in the Kashmir relief effort, and decry an influx of Western troops.

Byline: Zahid Hussain

With the advent of winter, hundreds of thousands of homeless victims of the earthquake in Pakistan's remote Kashmir region face the possibility of death from hunger, disease and cold. That dire prospect has sparked mounting public discontent with the way Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is confronting the disaster. "Pakistanis have never had much confidence in their government. But whatever faith in its competence they did have has been buried with the other debris of the earthquake," says Ayaz Amir, a leading newspaper columnist in Islamabad. Opposition leaders accuse Musharraf of using the catastrophe to further tighten the military's grip on the country and to undermine Pakistan's civil institutions. "Everything from the relief to the foreign donations is being controlled by the Army, and it is not accountable to anyone," says Sherry Rehman, a member of Parliament from the opposition Pakistan People's Party.

A potentially bigger problem may be brewing within the aid effort itself. Responding to an appeal from a top United Nations official, who had urged the alliance to mount a massive airlift to rescue stranded survivors, NATO last week announced that it would send as many as 1,000 troops to help clear roads blocked by landslides and speed relief supplies to relatively inaccessible areas. The United States, which had been criticized for not doing enough, already has more than 500 soldiers involved in the relief mission in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and northern Pakistan. And last week the United States set up an Army field hospital in Muzzaffarabad, the region's capital.

The Western troop presence has provoked angry reactions from Pakistan's opposition parties, particularly the Islamists, who've accused Musharraf of "betraying national interest" by letting foreign forces into the country. "The presence of such a large number of NATO troops threatens our national security," said Munawar Hussain, a deputy leader of Jamaat i-Islami. The group is the largest partner in the six-party Islamic alliance known as Muttehida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) that rules the North West Frontier Province. The alliance has threatened to launch a nationwide protest against the NATO forces after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan ends. During a heated ...