London blasts felt in Pakistani town

James Rupert

July 15, 2005

MIRPUR, Pakistan - In a Pakistan unsettled by growing questions about the role of its people in last week's bombings in London, no place is more troubled than this oddly British town.

Mirpur swelters in quite un-British heat atop the first low hill that pokes up from the northern edge of the humid Indus River valley. But thousands of its people carry British passports, speak in accents of Yorkshire or the Midlands, and pass time at entertainments such as the City Snooker Club.

Of the 750,000 ethnic Pakistanis living in Britain, scholars say half or more belong to families from Mirpur district, a sliver of southernmost Pakistani Kashmir. The money they send home has made Mirpur an informal British dependency.

The bombings of three London subway stations and a bus, people here say, have bitten the hand that feeds them. When news of the attacks broke, "we felt almost like the bombs exploded in Mirpur," said Ghulam Murtaza, the young manager of a downtown shopping mall that carries British breakfast cereals and baby food. "We all have friends and relatives in London," and Mirpur's phone lines quickly jammed as residents called to check on loved ones, he said.

With the news that three of the four bombers were Pakistani Britons - and that at least one of them may have been radicalized during religious studies in Pakistan - Mirpur fears a British backlash that could devastate the economy here.

More than 100 revenge attacks against British Muslims have been reported since the bombings, according to The Associated Press, and Pakistanis voice fear that Britain could tighten access to the visas that let them work there.

"Whatever prosperity and well-being we have in Mirpur is due first to ... almighty Allah and second due to Britain," said Chaudhry Muhammad Saeed, a Mirpur businessman who heads Pakistan's national chamber of commerce and serves as Britain's honorary consul in town.

"Britain is a tolerant country that has accepted our people and given them opportunities," he said.

Saeed voiced hope that any backlash will be contained, saying Prime Minister Tony Blair's government "is responding patiently" toward its Muslim community. Blair said Wednesday his government would hold a dialogue with British Muslim leaders to help "mobilize the moderate and true voice of Islam."

Mirpur's connection to Britain began in the late 1800s when men from here found work stoking the coal furnaces of British steamers sailing from Bombay. Many stayed in Britain and found their tolerance for heat helped them find industrial jobs amid the labor shortages of World War II. In the 1960s, when Pakistan built a dam below the town that inundated much of Mirpur's best farmland, Mirpuris flooded to Britain in search of work.

The flow of British pounds to Mirpur has half-transformed what was once one of Pakistan's poorest areas. While some residents still live in crowded hovels, families in Britain have built scores of fabulous palaces here, confections of marble, tile, glass, columns and wrought iron that rise three or four stories. Many such mansions are virtually empty except for a few weeks a year, when their owners return for holidays, family weddings or funerals.

Billboards for several shops advertise business locations in Mirpur - and in Birmingham or Bradford. The downtown boasts not only the City Snooker Club ("Like London Style!" proclaims its sign), but shiny auto dealerships and a British Airways office.

The money from Britain "has created a culture of dependency," Murtaza said. Unlike much of Pakistan, where educated children are seen as the one hope for a family to climb out of poverty, "here, when a child is born, many people think education is not necessary. Instead, the child is pushed from the beginning to do everything to get a [British] visa," Murtaza said.