Treading lightly

AFGHAN PRESIDENT HAMID Karzai visited Pakistan last week to address a relatively new and potentially dangerous problem: militants trained and funded in Pakistan to become suicide bombers in Afghanistan. Although the trip highlights growing tensions between the countries, it shows that Karzai is prepared to take a stronger and more realistic approach to the problems facing his beleaguered nation.

Tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan deepened after 9/11, when the Taliban sought refuge in Pakistan, and have increased in recent months as Karzai and other prominent Afghan leaders have vocalized their concerns about cross-border activity.

Since November, there have been 15 suicide bombings in Afghanistan, with Pakistan-based Taliban members taking credit for most.

The Afghan army -- one of the successes of the reconstruction -- hasn’t been able to quell the violence, and last year was the deadliest for American and coalition soldiers.

Now the protests against cartoons of Muhammad have spread into the country, with protesters threatening to join Al Qaeda if Karzai fails to shut down the French, Danish and American embassies.

Pakistan has its own complaints. Rockets and artillery fire from Afghanistan have killed Pakistani civilians, and the U.S. killed at least 13 in an attempted hit on Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri. President Pervez Musharraf is also concerned with the U.S. and Afghanistan strengthening ties with India, a nuclear rival of Pakistan’s that has about 400 soldiers on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Karzai treaded lightly with Pakistan, calling Pakistanis “our brothers” in a news conference Saturday in Kabul. Both countries pledged to cooperate more closely against terrorism, with Karzai giving detailed information to Pakistan on wanted Taliban members.

The weekend before his trip, Karzai said: “We will not be refugees again. We own this country.” He has spoken out against Afghanistan’s narcotics production, despite his economy’s (and some of his fellow politicians’ personal) reliance on it.

The Afghan president, who has been critical of the U.S. military’s lack of sensitivity in his country, is walking a fine line, eager to work with neighboring states while projecting a sense of firmness. The backdrop to everything he does is persistent domestic sniping that he is a puppet of the U.S., criticism that helped elect former Taliban members and warlords who were sworn in to parliament in December.

Karzai is smart to seek improved ties with Pakistan, even if there may be limits to how far that nation will go to help in the crackdown on Al Qaeda.