Pakistan anti-war groups are maintaining calls for a boycott of Kentucky Fried Chicken and other US brands after the overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
As the US attempts to install a new government in Iraq, Pakistan anti-war protesters are urging people to stay away from fast-food chains like Kentucky Fried and Pizza Hut. In Islamabad, they gather daily outside the outlets, distributing handbills asking customers to boycott US products.
Pakistan, a majority Muslim nation of 145 million, passed a resolution deploring the March 19 attack on predominantly Muslim Iraq after opposition parties staged rallies across the country.
"This is my way of protesting against the anti-Muslim policies of the US," said Mohammad Sohail, a computer engineer at a local firm in Islamabad, who canceled his weekly visit to KFC with his three children.
As retired US General Jay Garner attempts to rebuild the country, US-linked companies say more protests may tarnish Pakistan's image as a destination for foreign investment and skew relations with the US.
"These people don't realize that they are damaging our economy," Mohammad Sohail Masoud, territory manager north for Cupola, a Middle East-based company that holds the franchise for KFC in Pakistan, said in an interview. "It is not the question of sales, it is the image that is at stake." Some of the 1,200 local employees at the 24 KFC outlets in Pakistan may lose jobs if sales taper off, Masoud said. He declined to give figures for how much sales have been affected since the protests started. The KFC franchise paid 130 million rupees (US$2.25 million) tax, equivalent to 15 percent of sales, to the government in the year ended June 30, 2002, he said.
The KFC fast-food chain listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1969. PepsiCo Inc acquired it in 1986 and last year placed it under Yum! Brands Inc which owns A&W All-American Food Restaurants, KFC, Long John Silver's, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
"Boycott American Goods" reads a handbill distributed by Citizen's Peace Committee. "Part of the income from the sale of these goods goes to the US and Israel, and is being used to rain bombs on Iraq."
"The KFC and Pizza Hut business in Pakistan is locally owned and operated. Any action would only serve to hurt a local entrepreneur and their company's local employees," Jonathan Blum, spokesman for Yum! Brands, said in an e-mail.
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