In fact, Tuesday's demonstration was in Pakistan, the United States' ostensible ally in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, who is accused by the Bush administration of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The thousands of people who took to the streets here, urged on by a radical mullah, wanted to show the fragility of Pakistan's official support for the United States.

"America murda abad! America murda abad!" they chanted - roughly, "We hate America! We hate America!"

And then, ominously, "Pakistan murda abad!"

The demonstration came amid increasing signs of military action. In Washington, President Bush told Afghanistan's Taliban leaders to surrender bin Laden. If not, the president said, "there will be a consequence."

In Quetta, men crowded atop buses, waving the white flag of the Taliban and the black-and-white striped banner of the extremist Jamiat Ulema-I-Islam party, or JUI. JUI has urged fatwah, a religious edict, against any U.S. troops that attack Afghanistan or Pakistani troops who help them.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said that won't happen. He has limited Pakistan's military involvement in the fight against terrorism to use of its airspace by U.S. planes.

But that didn't quell the rumors - published on the front page of the local Balochistan Times - sweeping Quetta in recent days that this city's airport was being converted to a U.S. military airfield. And it didn't ease misgivings in this conservative Muslim nation of 141 million, which has historical ties to the Taliban and is home to two million Afghans. Pakistan now is the only country in the world that retains diplomatic relations with the Taliban, even though Musharraf recently told the BBC that the Taliban's days were numbered.

"If Gen. Musharraf supports America, he must be ready to count the dead bodies," said Abdul Ghafoor, a local JUI leader. "Musharraf, your days are numbered. Your government will not last long. America, listen carefully: We are ready to fight against you. We are ready for jihad."

Ghafoor spoke at a rally that followed several hours of street demonstrations Tuesday. Eventually, about 8,000 marchers stood at a field on the Railway Grounds, normally a site where people play cricket and soccer.

Between a hot wind, and thousands of marching feet, the field became a dust bowl. Men clasped one another's hands tightly as they walked, the custom here.

The focus of the rally was a graduation ceremony for 35 students at one of the local madrassas, radical Islamic schools.

Each of the graduates received the white turban of the Taliban. There were hundreds of such turbans among the crowd that sat for hours beneath a pitiless sun. Quetta is near the border with Afghanistan, and only 120 miles from Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold, where a similar demonstration was held Tuesday.

There, thousands of Taliban faithful burned effigies of President Bush and shouted, "Death to America!"

Quetta is home to thousands of Afghan refugees, and sympathies for its neighbors across the border are strong. "Taliban! Taliban!" the crowd chanted.

And: "We are ready for war! We are ready for jihad!"

The crowd shouted that Pakistan would become America's graveyard.

In that atmosphere, foreign reporters were not allowed to leave their hotels during the street demonstrations and could attend the rally only under armed escort. Fiercely mustachioed men on bicycles shook their fists at the foreigners. Small boys spat at them.

"Why are you here? What do you want?" hissed one youngster - who wore a White Sox baseball cap - before being shooed away by the armed guards.

It was the latest in a number of demonstrations in Pakistan, none of which have been widely disruptive. But officials are concerned that military strikes against Afghanistan could change that.

One Pakistani government security official told Knight Ridder News Service on Tuesday that authorities are girding for "extremely violent explosions of anti-American anger."

The Quetta crowd lost interest in the outsiders when Maulana Fazlur Rahman, leader of the JUI, appeared. Rose petals showered the dais as he made his way to the podium, and the crowd roared when he addressed them as "freedom fighters."

"In the history of the world," he told them, "no one has won a fight against Muslims. We have no weapon but our determination. We succeeded then, and we will succeed now."

As had others who spoke before him, Rahman blamed Israelis for the September attacks, maintaining that no Jews were on the planes that crashed or in the World Trade Center or Pentagon that day.

That assertion is false, according to the Bush administration, which says the hijackers were radical Muslims who left behind instructions that referred to Islamic belief, and which holds bin Laden responsible for the plot.

At the demonstration, Rahman chuckled at the United States' present plight.

"America," he said, "has become very poor. We are all here," he added, "to make America wise."

That is, to persuade the U.S. - and other countries, including Pakistan - not to attack Afghanistan or to support such an attack. But Pakistan already has agreed to back the United States, something that did not sit well with those who attended Tuesday's rally.

"If America attacks Afghanistan," said one man who attended the rally, "I think there will be civil war in Pakistan" between Musharraf's supporters and those who think Pakistan should side with Afghanistan.