Playing the blame game. Of course, in reality, both countries need to do much more. “UK fails to tackle home-grown terrorism: Pakistani officials,” from Dawn, September 9 (thanks to all who sent this in):
ISLAMABAD: Senior Pakistani sources have accused Britain of failing to do enough to tackle home-grown terrorists and maintain they are falsely being blamed for harbouring extremists plotting to attack the UK.
A senior Pakistan diplomat told the Guardian that his country was being treated as a ‘whipping boy’ by Britain. The terrorists, including those convicted on Monday for the airlines plot, were ‘born and brought up’ in Britain, not Pakistan, he said.
The diplomat also stressed the Pakistani intelligence tipped the UK off about the plot, saving 1,500 lives aboard seven transatlantic jetliners and thwarting al-Qaeda’s biggest attack on the west since 9/11.
British and US counter-terrorism officials believe that terrorists in Pakistan played a central role in the airlines plot. On Monday, three people were convicted of conspiring to explode liquid bombs on planes heading from London to North America, and a fourth was found guilty of conspiracy to murder.
Counter-terrorism officials in the UK believe the plot was put together on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, with a fixer linking al-Qaeda with the terrorist cell based in London and High Wycombe. Some belonging to the cell went to Pakistan for training.
In a calculated move, a senior Pakistani diplomat in London hit back, saying: ‘Sometimes, for our British friends the truth is bitter. We have somehow turned out to be a whipping boy; there is a long history to that. The British need to search their own house. Britain has to take responsibility and they have to look into the issues which are driving these youth to extremism, which is third-generation British – they weren’t born and bought up in Pakistan.’…