LAHORE: It is un-Islamic for anyone to be photographed, Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Sufi Muhammad has said.

Talking to a private TV channel, he said any duplicated image of a person, whether a “still picture or video” was un-Islamic. Referring to the various systems of governance, he said democracy, communism, socialism and fascism were all un-Islamic. He also said there was no need for a constitution in the country in the presence of the Quran and Sunnah, adding these were the “biggest laws” available to humanity. Focusing on democracy, he said it was un-Islamic, as infidels invented it. “I would not offer prayer behind anyone who would seek to justify democracy,” he said, adding this was why he had refused to offer prayers behind Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Fazlur Rehman. “How can people who believe in democracy be expected to enforce the ideals of sharia,” he said. He said the struggle for Kashmir was to obtain land where Muslims could move about freely rather than seeking the implementation of shariat.

Obligatory jihad: Sufi Muhammad said the sharia system of governance not currently in force anywhere in the world, not even Saudi Arabia or Iran. “Only the Taliban had enforced sharia when they were in power in Afghanistan,” he added. He said he had gone to Afghanistan to conduct jihad, and not to cater to Mullah Omar or Osama Bin Laden. “Jihad was obligatory at the time because the US wanted to end sharia in Afghanistan,” he added. He said Muslims could not wage jihad until the enforcement of sharia, adding jihad becomes obligatory on Muslims only after infidels attempt to eliminate the sharia system of governance. To a question on his organisation’s members picking up the sword in the past and killing people, he said he was opposed to such actions. “They took these actions without informing me and after I came to know of them, I prevented them from doing so,” he added.

Not allowed: On the status of women in a Taliban-run society, he said women were not allowed to come out of their house for any reason other than to perform Haj. However, he added, a female patient was allowed to visit a male doctor to seek a cure for her ailments.

Separately, Sufi Muhammad told another channel the TNSM wanted the implementation of sharia in Malakand Division. He said the qazis appointed by the NWFP government for the Darul Qaza were judges and their appointments had “not been in accordance with Islam”. He said the 1973 Constitution was an Islamic document but had not been implemented properly. He said the rules framed by the government for the Darul Qaza were unacceptable, adding the NWFP government had not consulted him prior to their establishment. Courtesy Daily Times

The bill proposes to give Pakistan $7.5 billion over five years —$1.5 billion a year —and an additional $7.5 billion over the following five years.—Reuters

WASHINGTON: The US Congress offered an olive branch to President Asif Ali Zardari on Monday, by introducing a bill to triple American aid to Pakistan on the day he arrives in the US capital on a four-day visit.

Two influential senators – Democrat John Kerry and Republican Richard Lugar – introduced the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement or the PEACE Act of 2009, in the Senate on Monday afternoon after a long delay.

‘The legislation intents to help transform the relationship between the US and Pakistan from a transactional, tactically-driven set of short-term exercises in crisis-management, into a deeper, broader, long-term strategic engagement,’ said a statement issued by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

The bill, first introduced in the 110th Congress, proposes to give Pakistan $7.5 billion over five years —$1.5 billion a year —and an additional $7.5 billion over the following five years.

Senator Kerry, the 2004 presidential candidate who now chairs the Senate committee, is a strong supporter of US economic assistance to Pakistan.

In an earlier interview to Dawn about his efforts to increase US assistance to Pakistan, Senator Kerry argued that the military alone could not defeat the extremists. The final victory, he said, could only be achieved by removing the root-cause: economic deprivation and unemployment.

Senator Kerry also opposed imposing new restrictions on Pakistan in return for US economic assistance, recalling that similar restrictions imposed in 1990 did cause an irreparable damage to US-Pakistan relations.

Mr Kerry, however, backed the requirements that seek total commitment from Pakistan in the fight against extremists and advocate strict accountability of the funds given to Islamabad.

He also backed placing some restrictions on the military assistance but said these were not new.

The announcement came two days before US President Barack Obama hosts presidents Zardari and Hamid Karzai for a trilateral summit aimed at improving relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In a news conference on Wednesday, President Obama pushed for more cooperation between these two key allies in the fight against extremism and expressed concern about the fragility of Pakistan’s eight-month-old civilian government which has made concessions to the Taliban.

Although details of the bill introduced in the Senate are still coming, it does not seem to contain too many contentious requirements.

The Pakistanis, however, fear that another bill to be introduced later in the House of Representatives would be more difficult for them.

Besides Pakistan’s compliance in the fight against terrorists, the House bill also requires Islamabad to mend its relations with India, stop all Kashmiri militant groups from operating from the Pakistani soil and to give an undertaking that it will not allow its territory to be used for any armed attack against or inside India.

Another provision could enable the United States to seek direct access to Dr A Q  Khan  Courtesy Dawn

In a statement issued by ISPR, the Operation in Buner is progressing smoothly and consolidation of Positions by security forces in Daggar and surrounding areas continues.

On Monday, Security Forces engaged militant’s hideout in Kalpani and there were reports of killing of 7 militants, including an important militant commander Afsar Hameed. 1 Soldier embraced shahadat while 3 others were injured.

There were also reports that militants were using 2000 innocent people as human shield in view of impending clearance of Pir Baba by Security Forces. The curfew in Buner relaxed from 11 am to 2 pm on Monday.

Militants high handedness continues in Swat and in gross violation of peace accord armed militants marched on the roads of Mangora city and other areas, threatening the lives of the innocent people of Swat and civil administration. Security Forces still exercising restraint to honour the peace agreement.

Against all norms of religious teaching and human ethics, Militants brutally beheaded two soldiers in their captivity on Sunday in Khawazakhela.

Militants also attacked a Security Forces convoy in Barrikot in wee hours of Monday and exchange of fire took place in which an officer embraced Shahadat and 2 soldiers were injured. Militants fired upon Security Forces at Maidan and 3 militants were killed in exchange of fire.

Militants raided a Security Forces check post at Shangla top in which one soldier embraced shahadat.

In another incident, militants burnt house of DSP at Kumber (Maidan) and also took away household items from the house of UC Nazim at Maidan, lower Dir. Militants also kidnapped few civilians from Kot Haya Sarai, Maidan.

Militants demolished a vacant Police Check post Yakhtangi at Shangla while 3 x civil trucks were also burnt at Biladram, Chamtalai. Courtesy Online

A girl at the Kacha Garhi IDP camp in Peshawar, Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD: 

Under the deal, the government agreed to allow Islamic law in the area and confine its military there to their barracks in return for a pledge by the Taliban to renounce violence.

Islamabad hasn’t officially said it scrapped the pact with the Taliban, which has refused to lay down their arms and last week declared the peace deal “worthless.”

Instead, the government said it will continue to implement Islamic law, or Shariah, in the area. Officials say that by doing so the government will rob the militants of their main source of popular support, a campaign for rule of law.

The insurgents Monday attacked the convoy near Bari Kot town, triggering a gun battle. A military spokesman said the attack was repulsed and warned of retaliation by the army.

Muslim Khan, a Taliban spokesman, said the group was responsible for the attack, and that it was responding to what he said was a strengthening of military positions in the region in violation of the peace deal.

“We can’t remain silent on the military buildup,” he told reporters. He said his group wasn’t bound by the truce.

Tensions escalated recently after the Swat Taliban advanced to surrounding districts, raising concerns that they sought to gain sway closer to Islamabad as well as to establish a route to Afghanistan and the tribal regions where the militant Islamist group thrives.

The army last week began an offensive to drive the militants back to Swat. Late last week, a hardline cleric who brokered the peace agreement on behalf of the militants rejected the judges appointed by the government to preside over the Shariah courts in Swat. He said they didn’t fulfill the requirements of Islam.

Sufi Mohammed, 78 years old, said the Pakistani government didn’t have any authority to appoint the judges, declaring that democracy is un-Islamic and that there was no need for a constitution in the country when it had the Koran. “All those who believe in democracy are infidels,” he declared in an interview with a private Pakistani television station.

The government put a night curfew Sunday in Mingora, the main town of Swat, after insurgents blew up a power station, plunging the region into darkness. Residents said armed militants were patrolling the streets.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for North West Frontier Province where Swat is situated, said Monday the government had fulfilled its part of the agreement by establishing Islamic courts and warned that anyone carrying arms would be treated as a rebel.

Analysts said the renewed military action in Swat would stretch the Pakistani army, which isn’t fully equipped to fight an insurgency that has spread over such a large area.

Islamabad’s attempts to fight the surging militancy are expected to feature in talks between Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and U.S. President Barack Obama this week in Washington. The Pakistani leader is likely to seek increased U.S. help to bail out the country’s battered economy and underequipped security forces.

Courtesy Wall Street Journal

Pakistan’s army abandoned a fragile truce with the Taliban in the Swat Valley on Monday after militants attacked an army convoy, killing one soldier. Army officials said troops were battling militants in several parts of the valley. They accused the Taliban of breaking the peace agreement, reached in February after 18 months of inconclusive fighting in Swat.

In a news briefing at the Pentagon, Admiral Mullen offered a mixed assessment about security in the region in advance of three-way meetings this week between President Obama and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

Admiral Mullen, who was in the region last week, said that he did not think for now that the United States had to worry that militants would get hold of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. “We all recognize, obviously, the worst downside with respect to Pakistan is that those nuclear weapons come under the control of terrorists,” Admiral Mullen said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. I don’t see that in any way imminent whatsoever at this particular point in time.”

But at the same time, Admiral Mullen said that the main military focus of the United States must now shift from Iraq to Afghanistan and that the gains of the Taliban in the region threatened American interests in the region as well as the safety of Americans at home.

“I say that with the full knowledge that we still have about 136,000 American troops in Iraq, and that the fighting there isn’t over,” Admiral Mullen said. “We remain committed to the mission we’ve been given in Iraq, make no mistake, and we will stay there long enough, in keeping with their agreement, to ensure the Iraqis can provide for their own security.”

Nonetheless, he said, “Afghanistan has been an economy-of-force operation for far too long.” Admiral Mullen said it was no longer about “can-do anymore, this is about must-do, and we must do more over at least the next two years, starting now.”

Admiral Mullen declined to offer a public assessment of the leadership of Mr. Zardari, who Pentagon officials consider increasingly weak, but he did say that Mr. Zardari needed to face a number of economic and political challenges at home. Courtesy NY TIMES

The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.

But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.

Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said.

Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites. But they said the most senior American and Pakistani officials had not yet engaged on the issue, a process that may begin this week, with President Asif Ali Zardari scheduled to visit Mr. Obama in Washington on Wednesday.

“We are largely relying on assurances, the same assurances we have been hearing for years,” said one senior official who was involved in the dialogue with Pakistan during the Bush years, and remains involved today. “The worse things get, the more strongly they hew to the line, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got it under control.’ ”

In public, the administration has only hinted at those concerns, repeating the formulation that the Bush administration used: that it has faith in the Pakistani Army.

“I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday, “primarily, initially, because the Pakistani Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.” He added: “We’ve got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.”

But that cooperation, according to officials who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity surrounding the exchanges between Washington and Islamabad, has been sharply limited when the subject has turned to the vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure. The Obama administration inherited from President Bush a multiyear, $100 million secret American program to help Pakistan build stronger physical protections around some of those facilities, and to train Pakistanis in nuclear security.

But much of that effort has now petered out, and American officials have never been permitted to see how much of the money was spent, the facilities where the weapons are kept or even a tally of how many Pakistan has produced. The facility Pakistan was supposed to build to conduct its own training exercises is running years behind schedule.

Administration officials would not say if the subject would be raised during Mr. Zardari’s first meeting with Mr. Obama. But even if Mr. Obama raises the subject, it is not clear how fruitful the conversation might be.

Mr. Zardari heads the country’s National Command Authority, the mix of political, military and intelligence leaders responsible for its arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear weapons. But in reality, his command and control over the weapons are considered tenuous at best; that power lies primarily in the hands of the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former director of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s intelligence agency.

For years the Pakistanis have waved away the recurring American concerns, with the head of nuclear security for the country, Gen. Khalid Kidwai, dismissing them as “overblown rhetoric.”

Americans who are experts on the Pakistani system worry about what they do not know. “For years I was concerned about the weapons materials in Pakistan, the materials in the laboratories,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who ran the Energy Department’s intelligence unit until January, and before that was a senior C.I.A. officer sent to Pakistan to determine whether nuclear technology had been passed to Osama bin Laden.

“I’m still worried about that, but with what we’re seeing, I’m growing more concerned about something going missing in transport,” said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, who is now at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Several current officials said that they were worried that insurgents could try to provoke an incident that would prompt Pakistan to move the weapons, and perhaps use an insider with knowledge of the transportation schedule for weapons or materials to tip them off. That concern appeared to be what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hinting at in testimony 10 days ago before the House Appropriations Committee. Pakistan’s weapons, she noted, “are widely dispersed in the country.”

“There’s not a central location, as you know,” she added. “They’ve adopted a policy of dispersing their nuclear weapons and facilities.” She went on to describe a potential situation in which a confrontation with India could prompt a Pakistani response, though she did not go as far as saying that such a response could include moving weapons toward India — which American officials believed happened in 2002. Other experts note that even as Pakistan faces instability, it is producing more plutonium for new weapons, and building more production reactors.

David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security wrote in a recent report documenting the progress of those facilities, “In the current climate, with Pakistan’s leadership under duress from daily acts of violence by insurgent Taliban forces and organized political opposition, the security of any nuclear material produced in these reactors is in question.” The Pakistanis, not surprisingly, dismiss those fears as American and Indian paranoia, intended to dissuade them from nuclear modernization. But the government’s credibility is still colored by the fact that it used equal vehemence to denounce as fabrications the reports that Abdul Qadeer Khan, one of the architects of Pakistan’s race for the nuclear bomb, had sold nuclear technology on the black market.

In the end, those reports turned out to be true.

Courtesy NY TIMES

Islamic Schools

MOHRIPUR: 

 The elementary school in this poor village is easy to mistake for a barn. It has a dirt floor and no lights, and crows swoop through its glassless windows. Class size recently hit 140, spilling students into the courtyard.

But if the state has forgotten the children here, the mullahs have not. With public education in a shambles, Pakistan’s poorest families have turned to madrasas, or Islamic schools, that feed and house the children while pushing a more militant brand of Islam than was traditional here.

The concentration of madrasas here in southern Punjab has become an urgent concern in the face of Pakistan’s expanding insurgency. The schools offer almost no instruction beyond the memorizing of the Koran, creating a widening pool of young minds that are sympathetic to militancy.

In an analysis of the profiles of suicide bombers who have struck in Punjab, the Punjab police said more than two-thirds had attended madrasas.

“We are at the beginning of a great storm that is about to sweep the country,” said Ibn Abduh Rehman, who directs the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent organization. “It’s red alert for Pakistan.”

President Obama said in a news conference last week that he was “gravely concerned” about the situation in Pakistan, not least because the government did not “seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services: schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people.”

He has asked Congress to more than triple assistance to Pakistan for nonmilitary purposes, including education. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has given Pakistan a total of $680 million in nonmilitary aid, according to the State Department, far lower than the $1 billion a year for the military.

But education has never been a priority here, and even Pakistan’s current plan to double education spending next year might collapse as have past efforts, which were thwarted by sluggish bureaucracies, unstable governments and a lack of commitment by Pakistan’s governing elite to the poor.

 “This is a state that never took education seriously,” said Stephen P. Cohen, a Pakistan expert at the Brookings Institution. “I’m very pessimistic about whether the educational system can or will be reformed.”

Pakistani families have long turned to madrasas, and the religious schools make up a relatively small minority. But even for the majority who attend public school, learning has an Islamic bent. The national curriculum was Islamized during the 1980s under Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, a military ruler who promoted Pakistan’s Islamic identity as a way to bind its patchwork of tribes, ethnicities and languages.

Literacy in Pakistan has grown from barely 20 percent at independence 61 years ago, and the government recently improved the curriculum and reduced its emphasis on Islam.

Failures in Education

But even today, only about half of Pakistanis can read and write, far below the proportion in countries with similar per-capita income, like Vietnam. One in three school-age Pakistani children does not attend school, and of those who do, a third drop out by fifth grade, according to Unesco. Girls’ enrollment is among the lowest in the world, lagging behind Ethiopia and Yemen.

“Education in Pakistan was left to the dogs,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad who is an outspoken critic of the government’s failure to stand up to spreading Islamic militancy.

This impoverished expanse of rural southern Punjab, where the Taliban have begun making inroads with the help of local militant groups, has one of the highest concentrations of madrasas in the country.

Of the more than 12,000 madrasas registered in Pakistan, about half are in Punjab. Experts estimate the numbers are higher: when the state tried to count them in 2005, a fifth of the areas in this province refused to register.

Though madrasas make up only about 7 percent of primary schools in Pakistan, their influence is amplified by the inadequacy of public education and the innate religiosity of the countryside, where two-thirds of people live.

The public elementary school for boys in this village is the very picture of the generations of neglect that have left many poor Pakistanis feeling abandoned by their government.

Shaukat Ali, 40, a tall man with an earnest manner who teaches fifth grade, said he had asked everyone for help with financing, including government officials and army officers. A television channel even did a report. “The result,” he said, “was zero.”

A government official responsible for monitoring schools in the area, Muhamed Aijaz Anjum, said he was familiar with the school’s plight. But he has no car or office, and his annual travel allowance is less than $200; he said he was helpless to do anything about it.

With few avenues for advancement in what remains a feudal society, many poor Pakistanis do not believe education will improve their lives. The dropout rate reflects that.

One of Mr. Ali’s best students, Muhamed Arshad Ali, was offered a state scholarship to continue after the fifth grade. His parents would not let him accept. He quit and took up work ironing pants for about 200 rupees a day, or $2.50.

“Many poor people think salaried jobs are only for rich people,” Mr. Ali said. “They don’t believe in the end result of education.”

Safety Net From Despair

In Punjab, the country’s most populous province, the despair and neglect have opened a space that religious schools have filled.

“Madrasas have been mushrooming,” said Zobaida Jalal, a member of Parliament and former education minister.

The phenomenon began in the 1980s, when General Zia gave madrasas money and land in an American-supported policy to help Islamic fighters against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

The Islamic schools are also seen as employment opportunities. “When someone doesn’t see a way ahead for himself, he builds a mosque and sits in it,” said Jan Sher, whose village in southwestern Punjab, Shadan Lund, has become a militant stronghold, with madrasas now outnumbering public schools. Poverty has also helped expand enrollment in madrasas, which serve as a safety net by housing and feeding poor children.

“How can someone who earns 200 rupees a day afford expenses for five children?” asked Hafeezur Rehman, a caretaker in the Jamia Sadiqqia Taleemul Koran madrasa in Multan, the main city in south Punjab. The school houses and feeds 73 boys from poor villages.

Former President Pervez Musharraf tried to regulate the madrasas, offering financial incentives if they would add general subjects. But after taking the money, many refused to allow monitoring. “The madrasa reform project failed,” said Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired general who served as education minister at the time.

Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, says he is acutely aware of the problem and is trying a different approach, recently setting aside $75 million to build free model schools in 80 locations close to large madrasas, a tactic General Qazi had also proposed.

In the district that includes Mohri Pur, a mud-walled village of about 6,000 where farmers drive on dirt roads in tractors and donkey carts piled high with sticks and grasses, there are an estimated 200 madrasas, one-third the number of public schools, said Mr. Anjum, the education official.

Nonreligious private schools have also sprouted since the 1990s. They have better student-teacher ratios, but only the most exclusive — out of reach of most middle-class Pakistanis — offer a rigorous, modern education. Mr. Ali, the fifth-grade teacher, says the madrasas have changed Mohri Pur. They are Deobandi, adherents of an ultra-Orthodox Sunni school of thought that opposes music and festivals, which are central aspects of Sufism, a tolerant form of Islam that is traditional here.

There were no madrasas in Mohri Pur in the late 1980s, when Mr. Ali began teaching. Now there are at least five. Most are affiliated with a branch in the neighboring town of Kabirwala of Darul Uloom, a powerful Deobandi seminary founded in 1952, and whose leaders in other parts of Pakistan have links to the Taliban.

Fear and Respect

Several local residents said they believed the Kabirwala seminary was dangerous. Some of its members were involved in sectarian violence against Shiites in the 1990s, they said.

Even if the madrasas do not make militants, they create a worldview that makes militancy possible. “The mindset wants to stop music, girls’ schools and festivals,” said Salman Abid, a social researcher in southern Punjab. “Their message is that this is not real life. Real life comes later” — after death.

On a recent Thursday, the Kabirwala seminary was buzzing with activity. Officials showed rooms of boys crouched over Korans, reading and rocking. A full kitchen had an industrial-size bread oven. Flowers adorned walkways. The foundation for a new dormitory had been broken.

There was also a girls’ section, with its own entrance, where hundreds of young women chanted in unison after directions from a male voice that came from behind a curtain. “We have a passion for this work,” said Seraj ul-Haq, a computer teacher who is part of the family that founded the seminary. Teachers preach restrictions. February’s newsletter set out a list of taboos: Valentine’s Day. Music. Urban women “wearing imported perfume.” Talking about women’s rights.

Suicide bombings were neither encouraged nor condemned.

The ideology may be rigid, but it offers the promise of respect, a powerful draw for lower-class young men.

Abed Omar, 24, had little religious education before he was inspired by a sermon at the seminary last year. Better educated than most, he began to work in his family’s sweets shop.

Restless and unfulfilled, he joined a conservative Islamic group, paying about $625 to travel with them around the country for four months on a preaching tour. The group, Tablighi Jamaat, taught him that Islam forbids music and speaking with women. (He would speak to this reporter only through a male colleague.) American officials suspect that the group is a steppingstone to the Taliban. Pakistani officials say it is peaceful.

Now, when Mr. Omar visits his friends, “they turn off their tape players and give me their seat,” he said, a smile lifting his face, which, in the practice of some conservative Islamists, has a bushy beard but no mustache.

He is frustrated by a lack of opportunity and at how much of Pakistan’s bureaucracy requires political connections, which he does not have. “There is no merit,” he said. His faith gives him hope. “I want to make everyone a preacher of Islam,” Mr. Omar said brightly, eating honey-soaked fritters in his family’s shop.

He knows about 100 people in his town who have done a four-month tour like his. As for those who sign up for less, he said “they are countless.”

 Waqar Gillani contributed reporting from Mohri Pur and Lahore, Pakistan.

Courtesy NY TIMES

Police officers stand outside a house in Manchester's Cheetham Hill area during April's terror raids

LONDON: Britain was yesterday plunged into a new diplomatic row with Pakistan over the arrests of 12 people accused of plotting bombing attacks on northern England. All were this week released without charge, but a top Pakistani diplomat in London has said that Gordon Brown’s statements after the arrests a fortnight ago were shocking and had helped extremists.

In an interview with the Guardian, Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s deputy high commissioner to London, said Britain appeared vindictive against Pakistani nationals and said claims that Islamabad was soft on terror were slurs.

Brown’s statements were taken by Pakistan as a public accusation that it was not doing enough to help the UK’s fight against terrorism. Ten of those accused were Pakistani nationals who entered Britain on student visas, one is believed to be Afghani, and another is a British national granted sanctuary here after claiming persecution by the Taliban. Durrani, a diplomat for 23 years with previous postings in Kabul and the United Nations, said: “Pointing a finger towards Pakistan was shocking for us … it was uncalled for and shocking.” His comments come amid international fear over the grip the Taliban is taking on parts of Pakistan. This week their forces were reported to be occupying areas less than 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said the situation in Pakistan now posed “a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world”.

Tension between Islamabad and London over terrorism has been rising for months. In December Brown claimed 75% of the plots Britain faced were linked to Pakistan, during a visit to the country.

The day after the arrests on 8 April, Brown said a very big plot had been foiled and he directly linked it to Pakistan. His aides gave details of a phone conversation two days later where Brown pressed Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, to do more. Durrani said Brown had been proved wrong about the arrests and that the “subsequent lessons we should learn is to wait for the outcome”.

Asked if Pakistan felt it had been accused of not doing enough to help Britain fight terrorism, Durrani said: “It was implied.”

He said Pakistan felt its efforts to fight terrorism were unappreciated by Britain and the west: “Pakistan’s name is dragged into the mud on every opportunity … either we are allies, or we are not.

“Back home it was considered to be uncalled for remarks, weakening the [Pakistani] government. It was taken as, despite all our efforts, you just brush them aside with the stroke of a pen.

“No one should expect Pakistanis [to] have good regard for the UK, if these kind of slurs and accusations continue to fly. They will see the UK becoming vindictive against the Pakistani nationals and they are being singled out.”

The 12 arrested were held for up to 13 days. Britain wants to deport the Pakistani nationals, being held in immigration detention, claiming they are a threat to national security.

Durrani said British Pakistanis had flooded his high commission with messages saying they were worried: “It has caused heartburn in Pakistan, among the community in the UK, they have been stereotyped … as terrorists.” He also accused Britain of breaking international agreements by refusing Pakistan officials consular access to its nationals: “Despite our repeated requests not even their names and details were provided.”

Durrani said the Foreign Office had said details were being denied for security reasons. The arrests were made on 8 April, but Pakistan said it did not gain access to the detained men until 20 April. Courtesy Guardian