British keep a wary eye on Pakistan

It says it has passed vital intelligence to Britain, helping to foil previous attacks, notably one just prior to the British election in May. Indeed, cooperation at the intelligence level has been noteworthy. When Pakistani agents picked up alleged Al Qaeda computer whiz Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan in Lahore last year, it quickly led to arrests in Britain.

"These events have really brought us closer to each other," says Abdul Basit, a senior Pakistani diplomat in London. "They have reinforced our mutual commitment to fight this scourge of terrorism."

Yet observers note that Musharraf has to be careful how robustly he squeezes the radicals in his midst. Militants have been very useful to Pakistan in projecting policy, fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, for instance, and serving on the front lines of Kashmir for decades.

Musharraf, moreover, would probably alienate large chunks of Pakistan's fiercely Islamicized society if he does not act deftly.

"General Pervez Musharraf is caught in a dilemma," says Ayaz Amir, an analyst and columnist for the respected Dawn newspaper. "On the one hand he must show that he is serious about so-called religious extremists and on the other he does not have the political legitimacy to order a real crackdown against the forces of religious extremists."

That much is evident from the streets of Pakistan, where clerics and some political leaders are incensed at being targeted in the wake of the London bombings.

"There is no military training in madrassahs, but launching a crackdown against the religious institutions and dubbing Muslims as terrorists are perceived as a conspiracy against the whole Muslim ummah [global Islamic community]," says Prof. Ghafoor Ahmed, deputy chief of the country's largest Islamic party, Jamaat-e Islami.

That view may gain credence when the identities are known of the four bombers who tried to execute copycat attacks on the London transit system last week. Early indications are that the men may have west or north African connections. If so, it would weaken the tenuous link between terror in Britain and teaching in Pakistan.

"Linking London bombing with Pakistani madrassahs is only part of a broader campaign and conspiracy against madrassahs," says Maulana Sami ul Haq, head of the Dar-ul Uloom Haqqania school at Akora Khattak, a refugee-camp-turned-town near the western border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan's flirtation with Islamicization really took root during the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan, when tens of thousands of mujahideen were sustained by Pakistan's security agencies, with covert CIA backing. After 1992, they remained either to fight in Kashmir or to strengthen Islamic parties in Pakistan.

But ties with Britain are subject to a different historical backdrop. On the positive side, the vestiges of empire have left a legacy of trade (Britain is the second largest investor in Pakistan), cross-cultural influence (from Pakistani literature in Britain to English sports in Pakistan), and migration (700,000 Pakistanis living in Britain).

Cultural misunderstandings persist, however. Strident voices in Britain still question why British-born Pakistanis support Pakistan, not England, in cricket matches. Few would ask the same question of an Australian living in Britain. That mistrust has sharpened since the bombings. Nearly two-thirds of Britain's 1.6 million Muslims have considered leaving the country, a Guardian/ICM poll shows.

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