The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), at a meeting in Peshawar, on September 16, said Muslims of Pakistan would not tolerate any assistance by the Federal government to the USA in its possible attacks on the Taliban regime. While declaring the US as the 'biggest criminal in the world', SSP leaders alleged that the terrorist acts in New York and Washington DC were a conspiracy to defame Islam.
Meanwhile, Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman said, in an interview, that any assistance rendered by Pakistan to the US Administration would embroil the country in an 'intense internal turmoil' and Pakistan would lose its sovereignty as also its respect. According to him, "The three options spelt out by President General Pervez Musharraf at his meeting with politicians on Sunday [September 16, 2001] night are not acceptable to us despite having consensus over the supreme national interest." However, he did not disclose the three options, indicating that politicians were asked not to reveal them to anybody.
Separately, Pakistani news reports indicated that several tribesmen in the tribal and border areas of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan have been mobilising their resources and populace to violently confront any external force that launches a military action against the Taliban regime. Reports quoting intelligence and paramilitary sources indicated that religious fervour has gripped the people in areas such as Dir, Bajore, Kohat, Bannu, Teri Mengal, Parachinar, and in other agencies of the NWFP. People have been seen pooling their arsenal with repeated calls from the mosques that people be ready to raise arms against a foreign army.
Pakistan: Religious parties give strike call for September 21
The Council for Defence of Pakistan and Afghanistan (CDPA), a group of over 20 religious parties, called a country-wide strike on September 21, 2001 to protest what it perceives as the US' efforts to implicate the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in the September 11-terrorist attacks in the US. In a statement released on September 17, the CDPA said, "The council considers an attack on Afghanistan as an attack on Pakistan and it will respond positively to the Jehad call given by the Afghan government."