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“Pakistan is still in denial,” said Husain Haqqani of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington whose book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, looks at state sponsorship of jihadi groups.

He points out that many senior figures in Pakistan’s military establishment had probably run camps: “The attitude of condoning extremist behaviour is so pervasive that it may be difficult for people to adjust to a new attitude of cracking down on them.”

The difficulty is establishing links between Al-Qaeda and jihadi groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-i-Toiba, Musharraf’s failure to rein them in suggests that they are out of control. “We might have created a Frankenstein,” one Pakistani military officer admitted.

How much the West has been willing to turn a blind eye was shown by its lack of censure over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist who provided weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Musharraf’s ludicrous claim that these were the actions of an individual without the knowledge of the state was apparently accepted by Washington, despite evidence of military planes transporting parts.

Those involved in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden have long believed that Pakistan knows more than it has let on and may have tipped off Al-Qaeda leaders, letting them escape. They point out that any time Pakistan has come under pressure from Washington it has diverted attention by arresting an Al-Qaeda leader.

Pakistan is sensitive to such criticism. Officials are quick to point out that Musharraf’s stance has placed his own life in danger and that Pakistan has lost hundreds of soldiers in Waziristan, the tribal area bordering Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda leaders have reputedly been hiding.

After July 7, Musharraf reacted angrily to questions over Pakistan’s role, retorting that the perpetrators were British-born Muslims (and one was of Jamaican origin) — a home-grown problem.

“We don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” said Aftab Khan Sherpao, Pakistan’s interior minister, after last week’s airline plot arrests. “We have been in close collaboration with the US and UK on the war on terror all along.”

The number of people from Britain’s Pakistani community going back to the country makes investigation difficult. There were more than 400,000 visits by UK residents to Pakistan in 2004, with an average stay of 41 days.

Pakistan insists it has taken action on the madrasahs, or religious schools, described as nurseries of terror.

Ijaz ul-Haq, minister for religious affairs, said: “Any madrasahs found involved with militancy or distributing hate material will be closed.”

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