Days of Rage.(protests of lawyers, Muttehida Majlis-e-Amal, Inter-Services Intelligence against President Pervez Musharraf)

In the white glare of a hot summer's noon, the broad avenues of Islamabad, Pakistan's modern capital, are usually empty. But on a sweltering day this May the streets were crowded with noisily chanting protesters, all of them demonstrating against the military government of President Pervez Musharraf. Three separate protests were under way. Each one represented a slightly different vision of the future that Pakistan might have if--as now seems more likely than ever--Musharraf's government were to fall.

The largest crowd by far was made up of lawyers in starched collars, white shirts, and black suits. They marched in orderly ranks, three abreast, like emperor penguins in a nature film. Some held up very British-looking umbrellas, on which markedly un-catchy slogans, such as "Long Live Lawyers Unity," had been carefully daubed in white paint. In earlier demonstrations, the lawyers had clashed with riot police, and the country's most senior barristers, silk ties flying, had responded with surprising vigor, hurling back tear-gas cannisters at staff-wielding policemen and jabbing at them with furled umbrellas.

The lawyers began demonstrating when, on March 9th, Iftikhar Chaudhry, Pakistan's Chief Justice, was suspended, reportedly because Musharraf had accused him of using his position for personal gain and for trying to get his son a top police job. The first demonstrations, which consisted of a few hundred lawyers protesting against Musharraf's attack on the independence of the judiciary, escalated into a full-scale campaign against military rule when, a week later, riot police attacked first the protesters and then the offices of an Islamabad news channel that had broadcast images of police beating up barristers. By May, the demonstrations had turned into a countrywide protest movement calling for fair elections, a civilian government, and the return of real democracy.

On that particular May day, the overwhelming majority of the protesting barristers were men. Yet at the center of the group was a fragile-looking, diminutive woman in a crisp white shalwar kameez, a neat black jacket, and heavy tortoiseshell spectacles, named Asma Jilani Jahangir. She is in many ways a symbol of the values that the lawyers are fighting for. Pakistan is a notably patriarchal society, but Jahangir is its most visible and celebrated--as well as most vilified--human-rights lawyer. She has spent her professional life fighting for a secular civil society, challenging the mullahs and generals, and championing the rights of women at risk of "honor killing" and religious minorities accused of blasphemy. She has investigated alleged extrajudicial killings by the security forces, set up a shelter for vulnerable young women, and campaigned to end child labor. For Pakistan's liberals, she is a symbol of freedom and defiance, comparable to Aung San Suu Kyi, in Burma.

"These protests really have touched a chord," Jahangir shouted to me as the lawyers chanted around her. "There is so much pent-up anger. The country is beginning to stir."

Five hundred yards from the lawyers, a group of heavily bearded men wearing checked Arab kaffiyehs and black turbans were engaged in their own protest. These were the supporters of a right-wing alliance of religious parties, the Muttehida Majlis-e-Amal, or M.M.A., which has become a significant force in Pakistani electoral politics. The alliance's imposing patriarch, Liaqat Baloch, was standing on a jeep, exhorting his flag-waving supporters. "The friend of Bush is our enemy!" he roared. "The rulers should read the writing on the wall! Help give one last push to the falling wall! The only system that will come here is the system of the Prophet!"

The third group of protesters that day was not as conspicuous, but represented the greatest immediate threat to the government. Less than a mile from the Supreme Court, and not far from the headquarters of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., an angry crowd of students stood outside the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, a sprawling complex of prayer halls, classrooms, and dormitories. During the previous six months, the Lal Masjid had become the principal center of radical Islamist resistance to Musharraf's rule. The Islamists in the Lal Masjid were not interested in elections. They wanted to take direct and immediate revolutionary action against a government that they regarded as an American puppet, an infidel imposition on a state that should by rights be ruled entirely by Islamic law.