Some people have begun to voice what has been for some time an unspoken fear in Pakistan - that of a U.S. attack.

What would happen if there were to be another big attack  on the United States that is traced back to militants holed up in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the Afghan border?

“Such an attack would immediately trigger massive bombing and an invasion of Pakistan by the U.S. and NATO,” says Riaz Haq in his blog Haq’s musings. “It could also result in the removal of the democratically elected government and installation of a new military regime in Pakistan,” he writes. “In addition to unparalleled death and destruction, such a scenario could turn Pakistan into a failed state with widespread unrest, homelessness, poverty, hunger and disease.”

Within the United States, he says, it would mean the election of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

A top adviser to McCain appeared to corroborate that bit at least when he was quoted as telling Fortune magazine that a Sept.11-type attack before the November election would benefit McCain. Charlie Black has since apologised for his remarks following widespread criticism.

Haq is the not the only one worrying about the months ahead. Pakistani blogger Farrukh Khan Pitafi  goes as far as to say : “Accept it or not, Pakistan is the next target of the U.S. invasion.” Over-reaction ?  Paranoia ?

You could argue both, but four months after Pakistan voted a civilian government into office there is a leadership void in  Islamabad, argues the New York Times, and perhaps that is feeding some of the insecurities. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in charge, and there is even less coherence on dealing with al Qaeda and the Taliban. The confusion is allowing the militants to consolidate their sanctuaries while spreading their tentacles all along the border area.

U.S. air strikes earlier this month in Pakistan’s Mohmand agency that killed 11 soldiers of the Frontier Corps,  followed up by a threat by Afghanistan’s Washington-backed President Hamid Karzai to chase down militants inside Pakistan, have heightened the anxiety.

But it isn’t just Pakistan. Descent into Chaos  is the title of reputed Pakistani journalist and author Ahmad Rashid’s latest book and it, according to the reviews, chronicles how the war against Islamist extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
 

A New York Times report about Pakistan threatening to postpone or cancel an American programme to train a paramilitary force because of last week’s U.S. air strikes has been widely picked up in the Pakistani media.

Eleven soldiers from the Frontier Corps died in those air strikes in the Mohmand agency in circumstances that remain unclear. But the U..S.-Pakistan alliance forged after the September 11 attacks has been deeply scarred as a result, says the report. It quotes former Pakistan Army chief General Jehangir Karamat as saying that the United States deliberately targeted Pakistani forces and that there had not been a statement from the United States that this was friendly fire and that the intention was not to attack Pakistani forces.

The Frontier Corps is the very paramilitary force that Washington had begun spending $400 million to train in counter-insurgency techniques.

Such is the anger in Pakistan, inflamed further by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s
threat to send troops in to Pakistan to stop cross border attacks, that defence expert Shireen M Mazari questioned whether America was a “dubious ally or an outright enemy.”

Air strikes are blunt instruments and rarely win hearts and minds, says writer Eric Margolis. Attacks by U.S. aircraft, Predator hunter-killer drones, U.S. special forces and CIA teams have been rising steadily inside Pakistan’s FATA, and instead of intimidating the Taliban, they have ignited a firestorm of anti-western fury among the tribesmen, he writes.

But the United States says cross border attacks into Afghanistan have been increasing - there were 50 percent more in April than the year before- attributing it to lack of pressure on the militants on the other side of the border.