It was just before dawn when armed men barged into a wealthy businessman’s heavily guarded house in the northwestern city of Peshawar and took away his young son.

Until recently such a kidnapping would have shocked residents of Peshawar, a city of three million people in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.

Not any more. The abduction this week was just one of a spate of kidnappings in and around the city in the past few months as Islamist militants and criminal gangs from the lawless neighbouring tribal areas seek a new source of funding.

One senior police official told The Times that there had been 124 reported cases of kidnapping this year alone. The real number could be higher as most people do not trust the police, preferring to pay the ransom. The militants demand up to £1 million. Non-payment often means death for the victim.

Analysts and government officials say that ransom money is in turn used to secure the release of insurgents captured by government forces. “Militants are using kidnapping as an instrument to mobilise funds as well as to intimidate government officials,” said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of North West Frontier Province, who is now head of the Peshawar-based Regional Institute of Policy Research.

Nor is it just Pakistanis who are at risk: the militants and criminals are seizing the small number of foreigners who live and visit here. Last week suspected militants kidnapped Hashmatullah Atharzadeh, an Iranian diplomat, from a busy street after killing his police guard. Gunmen also shot and wounded a Japanese man and Sami Yousafzai, an Afghan journalist, after failing to kidnap them. A few days earlier militants shot dead Stephen Vance, 52, an American aid worker, and his driver as they were heading to his office in the upmarket University Town neighbourhood of Peshawar.

Suspected militants are also holding two Chinese and one Polish engineer. They are demanding that the security forces release insurgent leaders. Abdul Khaliq Farahi, the Afghan Ambassador-designate, is also missing, after being kidnapped in September.

Several international aid agencies and non-governmental organisations have withdrawn staff from Peshawar, and many wealthy Pakistani families have moved to safer cities.

Local officials blame the abductions on lawlessness in the tribal areas near the Afghan border, where al-Qaeda and Taleban militants have been sheltering since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. They say that the victims are often kept in the tribal areas, where the federal Government has almost no control.

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