PESHAWAR, June 7: The arrest of Arab nationals by the state agencies in Peshawar last week on the suspicion of having links with Al Qaeda network has caused unrest among the workers of Middle East-based relief organizations.

Due to alleged maltreatment of these people at the hands of intelligence agencies, some Arab relief agencies are considering closing down their offices in Pakistan. In case these organisations go ahead with this plan, a number of orphanages, health-care projects and community infrastructure development activities would be forced to shut, information collected by Dawn revealed on Friday.

“The attitude of state agencies and the way investigations was carried out is regrettable. Arab NGOs can close down their offices in Pakistan in protest,” remarked an official of the Kuwait-funded Afghan Support Committee (ASC), one of the largest relief agencies functioning in Pakistan.

An Arab relief worker said: “The harassment of Arabs may evoke a backlash against Pakistani nationals in the Middle East.” He said that Arab relief agencies had threatened to wind up their operations in Pakistan when two workers of an Arab NGO were arrested in Peshawar in 2000.

“Nobody will take kindly to a situation in which perfectly legal operations of relief agencies are disrupted by midnight knocks,” said an angry Arab relief worker.

The secret agencies last week swooped on Arab nationals in Peshawar and rounded up over a dozen expatriates attached with three different relief organisations. They included a senior official of the ASC Hussain Khalil, three Sudanese, one Somali, one Syrian, one Algerian and three Palestinians, besides Kuwaiti and Iraqi nationals. They have been shifted from Peshawar to some unknown place for interrogations, official sources confirmed.

Islamic NGOs functioning in Pakistan include Afghan Support Committee, World Assembly of Muslim Youth, Kuwait Joint Committee, Islamic Relief Agency, Saudi Red Crescent Society, Islamic Relief Organization and Lajnat Al-Dawa Al-Islamia.

Some 56 Arab nationals, including 21 Sudanese, 14 Iraqis, four members each from Syria, Jordan and Algeria, and one national each from Morocco, Somalia, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, have been working for these relief agencies.

Official sources concede that these seven NGOs, which started their operations in early 1980s, helped a lot in looking after the Afghan refugees, particularly when the UNHCR and other donor agencies stopped assistance for refugees in 1995.

According to official documents, Arab NGOs spend roughly $50 million annually on the rehabilitation, education, health and nutrition of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and inside Afghanistan.

The Kuwait-funded ASC alone is running nine orphanages in Fata, NWFP and Azad Jammu and Kashmir where 3,500 orphans have been provided shelter. The agency is providing free education to over 10,000 Afghan and Pakistani children.

Arab relief agencies believe that their workers have been arrested without any reason despite the fact that the American agencies have recently cleared the ASC. “The American agencies went through the ASC’s record in Kuwait but they found nothing,” disclosed an official of the committee.

A source disclosed that an Iraqi was interrogated by the agencies in Peshawar for over 14 months and then he was deported to his country.

“This is absolutely humiliating. Islamabad has issued us visas and allowed us to work here. Now if it wants us to stop working then it should revoke its permission, cancel our visas and deport us, not raid our houses,” remarked an aid worker.

The chief of Peshawar City Capital Police, Khurshid Alam, however, said that police did not need to issue prior notice in operational matters. “In such activities police department has very little knowledge about the operation and its role is to assist the agencies only,” he maintained.