Opportunists Make Use of Cartoon Protests

"The local ones would like to be back as rulers of the country. And certain regional powers here would like to exert the same influence -- or more -- than they had before," he said Tuesday by telephone from Beirut. "It is difficult to convince many Lebanese that people aren't trying to use this for their own purposes."

In Indonesia, the Islamic Defenders Front, a radical Muslim organization, said the cartoons have made organizing easier.

"The moment has unified us," said the group's East Java chairman, Habib Abdurrahman Bahlaida. "The West had a bad plan to pull Muslims apart. Instead, they are pulling us together." The group, which claims 5 million members, attacked the Danish and U.S. consulates in the city of Surabaya on Monday.

But such groups are a tiny minority in Indonesia, where about 90 percent of the 240 million inhabitants are Muslims. Some moderate leaders on Wednesday appealed for calm and said the protests were being exploited by extremist groups.

"Do not go overboard and get trapped into a situation that can be used by elements bent on painting an image of Indonesia's Islam as an intolerant, rigid and anarchic society," said Din Syamsuddin, a leader of Muhammadiyah, an Islamic group that claims 30 million members, the Reuters news agency reported.

In Pakistan, too, conservative Muslim groups appeared to be using the uproar over the cartoons to gain leverage. In Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier province, several thousand people rallied Tuesday in a protest led by the provincial government, which is headed by an alliance of radical religious parties.

"We must at least throw out the ambassador of Denmark," said Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest religious party in Pakistan.

Rifaat Hussain, a Pakistani academic who is executive director of the Sri Lanka-based Regional Center for Strategic Studies, said the cartoons were being used as a tool to apply pressure on Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is perceived by many religious elements as being too close to the West.

"They want the protests to gain momentum and gain intensity so they can use them to undermine Musharraf," Hussain said from Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai was among the first to condemn the cartoons. For several days after rallies erupted elsewhere in the world, few other Afghans seemed to notice. But that changed quickly: Each day since Monday, Afghanistan has been the scene of especially violent demonstrations.

Experts here say religious motivations have played a key role. But so have local political issues, including personal disputes between factional leaders.

Following deadly protests on Monday in Laghman province, in eastern Afghanistan, authorities are looking into the possibility that the protests were instigated by allies of a militia commander killed late last year under mysterious circumstances. In the western city of Herat, where about 8,000 protesters gathered Tuesday, authorities suspect the influential hand of Ismail Khan, a former governor who is still bitter about his removal from office.

And in the northern city of Meymaneh, a local commander who has lost power since NATO troops arrived was believed to be behind protests Tuesday in which three people died as they attempted to storm the alliance's base.

"The warlords are looking for opportunities," said Nader Nadery, leader of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kabul. "And this is a good opportunity to motivate people."

Correspondent Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta and special correspondents Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, and Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report.