OVER THE weekend, hundreds of Pakistani paramilitary forces moved into the northwestern city of Peshawar and its outskirts to drive out Islamist militants who had been kidnapping local notables, taking over courts and jails, and imposing their own brand of Taliban-style justice. The fact that Pakistan's Frontier Corps was called on to conduct this operation implies that the coalition government elected in February is losing ground to extremists, and that its efforts to negotiate a truce agreement with Pakistani Taliban groups have failed to rein in, or even constrain, the various jihadist bands in the region.
Because some of these bands have been crossing into Afghanistan with fighters of the Afghan Taliban, and because some are helping shelter Al Qaeda operatives in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, their mushrooming power threatens not only Pakistan but also the United States. If Peshawar, a major city, can be infested even temporarily by the Pakistani Taliban, there is reason to worry about the long-term stability of this nuclear-armed state.
The most immediate danger for Americans comes from the sanctuary that Al Qaeda enjoys in the tribal areas of Pakistan. US intelligence officials estimate there are now about 2,000 recruits being trained at small Al Qaeda camps located in the inaccessible mountains and valleys of Waziristan. If there is to be another terrorist attack on America on the order of Sept. 11, it is likely to originate from those camps.
So there are two nasty realities that the next American president will need to confront. One is that Pakistan, despite having a secular civilian government elected in free and fair balloting, seems unable to overcome, or even resist, the swelling power of its Islamist militias. Whether or not Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency wittingly helped some of the Islamist groups attain their current dominance in the tribal areas, one result is that Al Qaeda has been able to recreate a new version of the safe haven it lost when US forces toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Hence the second nasty reality: the harsh facts on the ground that suggest the Bush administration has been losing its proclaimed war on terrorism. It will be up to the next president to develop a coherent long-term strategy for coping with Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups.
An incisive report in Monday's
Bush's successor will need to reconsider the nature of the terrorist threat, starting with an understanding that the jihadist movement is aimed primarily at overthrowing regimes in the Muslim world which it deems insufficiently Islamic. In this internal war within the world of Islam, America has been targeted as the "far power" propping up governments such as those in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.
The next US administration will need to lower the American profile in this war. It will have to cooperate more extensively, and quietly, with intelligence services and law enforcement in the Arab world, central Asia, and Europe.
Bush's inflating of the terrorist threat to the scale of a third world war has helped Islamist ideologues propagate the notion that America is waging a war against Islam. To win a war of ideas with violent Islamists, the next president must counter this dangerous propaganda. That will mean resisting any temptation to conduct military operations in Pakistan that can be depicted as an American occupation of yet one more Muslim country.
