FEATURE: Under-fire charities hunker down in Pakistan

Long-haired gunmen burst into the white stone building and killed four charity workers helping earthquake victims, then wrecked the office with grenades and set it on fire. Police came, but did not intervene.

In a tactic reminiscent of neighboring Afghanistan, Islamic militants are attacking aid groups in Pakistan's volatile northwest, and local authorities appear incapable -- or unwilling -- to stop them.

The threat has forced several foreign agencies to scale back assistance to survivors of the October 2005 earthquake that killed at least 78,000 people and left 3 million homeless -- risking the region's recovery from the worst natural disaster in the country's history.

The Feb. 25 attack on employees of Plan International, a British-based charity that focuses on helping children, was the worst in a series of threats and assaults on aid workers in the northern mountains where Taliban-style militants have expanded their reach in the past year.

Nearly a month later, menacing letters are still being sent to aid organizations. Although all four victims in Mansehra were Pakistani men, Islamic extremists despise the aid groups because they employ women and work for women's rights.

Local officials in Mansehra, who spoke on condition they not be identified for fear of retaliation, said letters from extremists distributed last Thursday and Friday also warned schools to make sure girls are covered from head to toe and to avoid coeducation.

The militants may also be trying to discredit Pakistan's central government, and to enforce a radical religious agenda in a conservative region where jihadist-linked groups were themselves a source of aid after the quake.

Police accuse a local militant, Mohiuddin Shakir, who goes by the alias Mujahid, of masterminding the attack last month on the aid office in Mansehra. He has not been arrested.

Shakir, a former member of an al-Qaeda-linked group, has criminal charges against him in Pakistan dating back to 2002, including for murder, police records show.

Shakir now leads a jihadist group called Lashkar-e-Ababeel.

Last summer, Shakir wrote a letter to newspapers warning international aid groups about hiring women and warning women to wear an all-encompassing veil.

Yet Abdul Ershad, an officer investigating the attack, said that as recently as late last year, Shakir had a working arrangement with police in his hometown of Phulra not far from Mansehra. To advance his agenda, he would tell police about residents involved in "un-Islamic" activities -- like men selling pornographic videos and socializing with women -- and police would arrest them, Ershad said.

Brigadier Waqas Iqbal Raja, the chief security official for the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency, acknowledged a growing presence of extremists in the quake zone, including some militants displaced by an army offensive against supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric in neighboring Swat district.

Tribal elders have promised to help protect aid workers, and Raja said he has advised the workers to keep a low profile and stay off the roads at night.

He could not explain why Shakir was still at large.

"I wouldn't want to comment why he is still free. But there were definitely some lapses in police procedure and protection," Raja said.

Distrustful residents did not alert police when six or seven militants with long hair and their faces hidden behind scarves descended in broad daylight on the Plan International compound. The militants ordered the security guard to leave.

Sajjad Mahmood, a clerk working next door, said police arrived after 30 minutes and just stood outside the gate while the assailants were inside. When the gunmen emerged, police did not try to stop them, he said.

Since the attack, aid organizations have withdrawn their female field workers. Authorities are asking them to move their offices into a gated community in Mansehra with its own police post.