PAKISTAN IS being drawn inexorably into the war in neighbouring Afghanistan, as both sides there escalate that conflict beyond its borders. Last Saturday's car bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed 53 people and wounded at least 200, is a stark warning to the new president Asif Ali Sardari of how potent a threat he faces.
He is under pressure from sections of the armed forces and the United States to take much more robust action against the Taliban and al-Qaeda alliance in the border regions with Afghanistan. It is a real dilemma, with risks both ways, because the long-term strategy required to prosecute such a war successfully could split Pakistan apart.
The Afghan war pitches President Hamid Karzai's government and Nato forces against a growing rebellion by the Taliban, in alliance with regional nationalists who resent and resist the country's occupation. It is fuelled by a huge opium production and drugs industry backed by corrupt warlords.
Increasingly the war looks unwinnable without major escalation. In the 1980s the US encouraged the Taliban force against Russian occupation, funding Pakistan's support for the campaign. The Taliban thereby got the springboard they needed to seize and hold power in the 1990s, until toppled by the US in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
This longer history is the essential backdrop to the central role played by the immense borderlands area, now a strategic haven for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, under pressure from Nato forces. Former president Pervez Musharraf was not able or willing to bring them under full Pakistani control; he compromised by doing a deal with regional leaders and militias. It has now unravelled, as the US decided this summer to mount attacks across the border with drones and marines. The Marriott attack is best understood as a retaliation against that provocation, and is calculated to exploit nationalist feelings and test army loyalties.
President George Bush has a clear interest in securing his legacy by pursuing a military victory in Afghanistan, if necessary by drawing Pakistan into a military surge against the Taliban. It is a dangerous course because Pakistan's fragile political system may snap under the strain of accepting between the US violation of its sovereignty and effectively internalising the Afghan conflict. A less risky alternative policy would accept the overlap between these conflicts but simultaneously seek a political solution capable of isolating the Taliban in both countries.