KABUL - Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has said that he wants Afghanistan and Pakistan to mount a collaborative plan of action against terrorism and extremism, reported Voice of America and Pakistani private TV channels on Sunday.Karzai has sent letters to Pakistan’s political and religious leaders about the terrorist attack on 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai who was shot in the head and neck last week by the Taliban. The president said in the letters that neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan face ‘a dangerous enemy’ who seeks to doom the present and the future of their countries to ‘darkness and ignorance’.In the letters, Karzai denounced the Taliban attack on Malala and asked Pakistani politicians to help battle extremism in both countries.Karzai’s office said in a statement that the president wrote that the attack on Yousafzai indicated that both Afghanistan and Pakistan need to take ‘coordinated and serious’ steps to fight terrorism and extremism. Karzai wrote that he views the shooting as an attack on Afghanistan’s girls as well.“It is a deplorable event that requires serious attention,” Karzai wrote.Those upset about the shooting should not be silenced, he wrote, and both Afghans and Pakistanis need to cooperate and fight with strong resolve against terrorism and extremism so that the ‘children of Afghanistan and Pakistan’ can be saved from oppression.The letters were sent to more than a dozen political and religious leaders, including President Asif Ali Zardari; Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Nawaz Sharif, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, and Imran Khan.Khan has been especially outspoken against U.S. drone attacks. Khan has argued in the past that Islamabad’s alliance with Washington is the main reason Pakistan is facing a homegrown Taliban insurgency and that militant activity in Pakistan’s tribal areas will dissipate when US troops withdraw from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry has criticised PTI Chairman Imran Khan who characterised the fighting in Afghanistan as a ‘jihad’.Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Musazai said on Sunday that Khan’s comments were dangerous and shameful. Musazai said the comments showed that Khan is ‘either dangerously uninformed or has bad intentions’ about the fighting in Afghanistan.In another development, about 100 Afghan men participated in a demonstration against Imran Khan in Kandahar on Sunday and also raised slogans against him and burnt an effigy.