Despite the confinement of Rehman and several other firebrand clerics, demonstrations continue.
Rehman, an imposingly large, fleshy man with the compulsory heavy beard and black curls peeping under an embroidered cap, is guarded at his large, raw-looking concrete villa by armed police. But he is not kept in isolation, and a steady flow of visitors troop in.
I was the first foreigner to tread in their footsteps.
Rehman's rhetoric is a cocktail of blandly outrageous assertions and more interesting comments suggesting a shrewd political mind. The Jews, he claimed, were behind the attacks on September 11.
"Before the US/United Kingdom attacks began, we were not sure what their nature would be. Now our suspicions have been confirmed: as we feared, civilians are the only targets."
Osama bin Laden could not have committed the attacks: "He doesn't have the resources."
If he was not involved, why had Osama rejoiced in them?
"It is only human to be glad when bad things happen to your enemy." The demonstrations organised by JUI have kicked up a lot of noise, but had they achieved anything else? "The Government offers only limited support to America. Our protests have encouraged the mass of people to give moral and political support to the people of Afghanistan." Musharraf has been at pains to point out that Rehman represents a minority - 15 per cent of the population.
He responds: "Well, 15 per cent is a big part of the population.
"China and Russia had wanted America to attack Afghanistan," he chuckled fleshily. "America has fallen into a complicated trap, and it won't be able to get out."
Outside the house, my translator and I were told by the police we were not at liberty to go back to our hotel but had to make the five-hour drive back to Islamabad "immediately".
An officer with a submachine gun was put into our car and we were taken around the town's primitive police stations while they tried to decide what should be done with us. After a two-hour wait we were told we could stay in the town overnight but first thing in the morning must return to Islamabad.
To prevent his domestic problems becoming critical, Musharraf is resorting to the tried and trusted Pakistani standby of heavy policing.
And that may be a prudent precaution, because up and down the North West Frontier, the blood of the people is rising.
We did not return to Islamabad by the fastest route. Instead we meandered northward.
The Afghan border was 60km away, the far side of tribal lands into which foreigners may not venture without permits that are now impossible to obtain.
We stopped for tea in the town of Tank, where the Raj administrator Sir Mortimer Durrand was knocked from his elephant and killed 150 years ago by a gate that was too low. The gate was named Durrand Gate in his memory.
But the locals do not have much love for the English (in which term they include America).
"The English cannot win this war," a bearded young man told me with his eyes glinting.
"To repay these attacks, we will do much harm to the English," he added, pulling a fingernail across his jugular. At another stop, we were told: "We all support the Taleban here. It's nothing to do with the religious parties - all of us feel the same way. We're not a minority at all. Only two per cent support Musharraf."
Musharraf has repeatedly argued that the anti-American protests are the work of religious parties such as Rehman's. In the cities this may be substantially true.
But in the small towns of North West Frontier Province, anger about the war is general.
On the morning of another planned protest in Rehman's town of Dara Ismail Khan, that anger was stifled before it began.
Before the demonstration, a convoy of troops, Frontier Constabulary and regular police poured into the town in jeeps with mounted Machine guns.
Musharraf is leaving little to chance.
-
INDEPENDENT
Map: Opposing forces in the war against terror
Afghanistan facts and links
Full coverage: Terror in America
