I am afraid I flew with Gulf Air 2 years ago out of India
and was amazed by the way the crew treated the mainly
Indian passengers.

People in the Middle East have a rather odd attitude to their
neighbours in the sub continent - rather strange really as I
would have thought it would be the other way around.

Discrimination is rampant in the Gulf. In the heirarchy, Gulf Arabs are at the very top and South Asians at the very bottom.

However, I don't believe that is why you had trouble booking. Travel Agents in the Sub-Continent are infamous for their ability to cause Airlines headaches through GDS abuse. Pakistan is among the worst and the passengers are often complicit in attempting to defraud airlines. EK wants you to book through the local office to ensure that the booking is valid. EK gives the local offices quite a bit of discretion to manage their inventory to maximise revenue. With business class fares very low out of Pakistan, the local office may have decided to not make the offer available except to their best customers/agents.

This has been a major issue in the past - to the point of people buying tickets ex. Pakistan then using them in reverse order from Europe to take advantage of cheaper fares. However, now everything is slowly becoming more and more "to the rules." My TA told me that EK has become so strict that it is assinging harsh penalties to the TA if anything is done fradulently or incorrectly.

With regards to my booking - it wasn't even booked or ticketed in Pakistan - it was bought in Canada at Emirates. My first Emirates flight on the ticket just happened to be from Karachi.

Cheers