About 1 million people of Pakistani descent are living in Britain and some 400,000 travel back to Pakistan every year. From Karachi, a city of 14 million, or Islamabad, the capital, they can easily make their way to the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) or Baluchistan, two of Pakistan's four provinces that are governed by politico-religious extremists -- a coalition of six parties known as MMA -- and locate training facilities in explosive techniques.

Thirteen percent of Britain's 1.8 million Muslims told pollsters they approved of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, as well the Jul 07, 2005, suicide bombings against London's subway trains and a double-decker bus. That's almost 200,000 in the United Kingdom alone who sympathize with the terrorists.

So last week's terrorist plan with two consecutive car bomb attacks in London and one in Glasgow was hardly surprising. The number of terror suspects monitored by Britain's MI5 has grown 25 percent in the past six months. Last November, shortly before she resigned as director of MI5, Britain's internal intelligence agency, Eliza Manningham-Buller said 1,600 people were under surveillance in some 200 terrorist cells or groups of extremists. She added 30 active plots "to kill people and damage the economy" were in the planning stage and known to MI5. These grim stats have grown grimmer since last November.

For six years, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been in deep denial about Taliban's privileged sanctuaries in the mountainous border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. When he signed a pact with border tribal leaders in North Waziristan last Sept. 5, he said they had agreed to keep both Taliban guerrillas and their al-Qaida allies from fomenting further trouble. Several hundred Taliban and al-Qaida members captured since 2001 were released. In reality, this was a face-saving device to allow the Pakistani army to stand down. It had lost some 700 men killed and 2,500 wounded in an ill-fated campaign that had been fought under U.S. pressure.

Since then both North and South Waziristan, two of the seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), are under de facto Taliban control. Its leaders say they have established the "Islamic Emirate of Waziristan." Shariah courts are operating in both Wana (south) and Miranshah (north), the two Waziristan capitals. And hundreds of youngsters have been recruited for suicide bombing missions in Afghanistan.

Last April, Uzbek radicals who married local girls, and who were survivors of the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, which covered Osama Bin Laden's retreat from Afghanistan, were ousted by young Taliban Turks, not by the Pak army as originally reported. The new Taliban honcho in South Waziristan is Mullah Nazir, 32, who said he wouldn't hesitate to shelter Osama Bin Laden if he requested protection.

Taliban fighters have been stopping cars in FATAland to smash their cassette players. The outlawed Lashkar-e-Islam (LEI) terrorist organization staged a public rally in the Khyber agency. LEI leader Mangal Bagh presided over a public stoning in March and on May 21 he was heard on FM radio ordering the execution of Nasrullah Afridi, a tribal journalist in the Khyber agency. And later that same day, a music store was blown up in the home village of the federal interior minister in NWFP.

That same day, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher, on a visit to Islamabad, praised the Pak army for repelling Taliban and al-Qaida operatives on the Afghan border. The army had been lying low for nine months, but next day, May 22, Pak commandos and helicopter gunships attacked an al-Qaida camp in Zargarkhel village in North Waziristan. Four al-Qaida operatives were killed. And the agency's tribal elders resigned, protesting the violation of the pact they signed with Musharraf last Sept. 5.

Retaliation quickly followed. Taliban fighters car-bombed a military convoy, killing and wounding 10. FATA's Bajaur agency is under virtual Taliban control. In the NWFP, four districts -- Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Swat -- are also considered Taliban country. Taliban fighters are now spilling out of lawless FATA into NWFP and Baluchistan. Finally, Musharraf warned religious extremism is now threatening the entire country, one of the world's eight nuclear weapons powers. Illegal arms dealers are registering record sales from Karachi to the Khyber Pass.

The United States warned Americans not to travel to Pakistan as intelligence suggested Western interests in the country were due to be attacked. U.S. citizens working in Pakistan were advised to avoid areas where Westerners normally meet, to always vary their routes and times to and from work.

Unless the Pakistani army restores the central government writ in FATA, the United States may decide the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan is tantamount to a declaration of independence by Taliban and al-Qaida -- and a green light to bomb and attack with special forces. But if Musharraf decides to re-invade the tribal region, he runs the risk of a national upheaval by powerful radical forces. And if he doesn't and lets the United States attack the Taliban's privileged sanctuaries in FATA, he still runs the same risk, perhaps even greater.

Salman Rushdie's recent British knighthood kept Pakistan's fundamentalist pot boiling. The Pakistani Ulema Council, a private body that claims to be the largest in the country with over 2,000 scholars, responded by honoring Osama Bin Laden with top title of Saifullah, or Sword of Allah. And the speaker of the House said he wouldn't hesitate to kill blasphemer Rushdie.

Iftikar M. Chaudhry, the chief justice suspended by Musharraf, has toured the country, drawing huge crowds demanding the restoration of the rule of law. Yet many of them are the same extremists who want to impose Shariah law that blatantly discriminates against women and non-Muslims.

Despite all his faults and long-time appeasement of politico-religious fanatics, President-General Musharraf is still the principle barrier to the process of Talibanization. He is also the only one who can make democracy happen again. Allowing Benazir Bhutto back from exile would be a sensible first step.

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