As everywhere in the retrograde Islamic world, issues are convoluted and saturated in historical precedent not likely to be appreciated to an interloper, no matter how deep his commitment to reform and willingness to take risks in the present conflict.

Raising a modern regime, as the U.S. and its allies have pledged to do, in Afghanistan’s feudal culture would have been enough of a project. But its relationship to its southern neighbor, Pakistan, as with its predecessors, is a bundle of contradictions.

Not a little rubbish has been written by 19th century romantics of “the noble savage” persuasion, about the people who inhabit the area [much as similar aficionados have confused Arab issues with their romance with a mythical Bedouin]. The area’s thuggish society defeated British colonials, after valiant if disastrous attempts to bring it under the raj and was finally left to its own devices — with occasional punitive expeditions and payments to corrupt leaders.

Unfortunately, for both countries, the 1,000-mile demarcation drawn setting up the buffer of Afghanistan, to separate British India and expanding Russian imperialism, was poorly drawn. Sir Mortimer Durand, then foreign secretary of the Calcutta government — often at odds with London — hoped by deliberately dividing Pushtoon-speakers, about two thirds in then British India, the rest in Afghanistan, to divide and conquer.

Instead, the separation added decades of politiking, before and after Pakistan’s creation in 1947, with ousiders trying to use the tribesmen’s guerrilla abilities and oustreched palms. Even Mohandas Gandhi, agitating for Indian independence in his preodminantly Hindu National Congress, enveigled a strong following among local Moslems, dedicated opponents of local promoters of an Islamic state. The Soviets exploited the region all through the Cold War. Traditionalism and the old anti-central government sentiment now is a base for the new Islamofascists.

It was into this morasse Washington and its allies plunged when they set out to deny sanctuary to Osama Bin-Laden after 9/11, and hopefully, to capture him. But the Taliban regime which Washington quickly overturned in Kabul had deep roots on both sides of the border, with locals helping hide Osama and supporting his remnant following.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf flipped Pakistan into the anti-terrorist alliance after 9/11 abandoning the Taliban which Islamabad’s crackpot strategists had once seen as furnishing “strategic depth”against India — as always viewed in the monomaniacal Subcontinent climate of the India-Pakistan feud. And reluctantly he sent the Pakistan regular army for the first time into semi-independent tribal areas hunting down foreign terrorists. The fighting was gruelling for a Pakistan army suited up for the the Punjab plain where it gave good account of itself in three and a half wars against the Indians Losses have been heavy with severe politicval implications for Musharraf, fighting on two fronts against a swelling Islamist radicalism and shameless corrupt feudal civilian politicians, often naively seen abroad as democrats. Furthermore, a small but important contingent of his army is recruited from the tribes, for whom such fighting is anathema.

Picking up old threads, Musharraf tried to reach a modus operandi with tribal leaders, offering an end to Pakistan Army penetration [and the imposition of civil code] in exchange for rooting out foreigners — Arabs and other fanatical terrorists behind Osama and his al Qaida. But the Taliban has revived in Pushtoon areas, in part a product of failure of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s regime to roll out from Kabul, the compact has collapsed. American, Canadian, and British Afghanistan commanders, harassed by restrictions placed on their deployment of NATO partners meager forces, fighting Taliban Pushtoon guerrillas, have charged sanctuary is being given across the border in Pakistan.

Some 4,000 people have died in fighting in Afghanistan, the bloodiest year since the Taliban’s fall in late 2001. The insurgency has gained significant momentum, although NATO commanders say the rising toll is due to part to coalition troops' aggressive pursuit.

A recent proposal — tacit admission after many disclaimers — by Musharraf to fence and mine border areas was instantly denounced by Karzai as inadequate. Meanwhile, the UN is corraling and registering more than a million Afghanistan refugees still in Pakistan — not very reassuring given the UN’s role in promoting militants in the Palestinian camps over the past 50 years. As the situation worsens, relations between Musharraf and Karzai — despite highly touted ceremonial meetings — have worsened [not in small part because of Karzais’ hardly disguised attempts to play the Indian card, for example, permitting border consulates to reopen as one of his first diplomatic maneuvers].

But as in Iraq, Washington has no choice but to find a way to prevent Afghanistan falling back into becoming a sanctuary for Islamofascists, which a return of Taliban to power no matter how chastened would almost inevitably produce. Nor does it seem Musharraf has more than an ugly choice of extended cooperation against the Taliban — a threat to his regime, and, indeed, his person, after at least three assasination attempts.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.