RIDING THE TALIBAN TIGER

The patience of the international community is wearing thin. In December, the U.N. Security Council made its harshest condemnation of the Taliban to date, threatening sanctions and calling on the regime to open talks with the opposition. The Taliban response was predictably dismissive. But it was the reaction of Pakistan that caused the most surprise. Alone among the U.N.'s 185 member states, Pakistan put forth a spirited defense of the Taliban, urging the world to recognize the regime and draw it into the mainstream. The appeal threw a spotlight on a long-simmering crisis in Pakistan's Afghan policy.

Pakistan has to date maintained a two-track foreign policy toward Afghanistan. On one level the foreign ministry has long called for a peaceful settlement of the civil war and a representative coalition government. On the ground, meanwhile, Islamabad's military intelligence service continues to support a movement that has declared, repeatedly and unambiguously, its opposition to power-sharing and its determination to subdue the country militarily. As a result, Pakistan finds itself all but diplomatically isolated at a time of historic economic, social and political challenges.

The original reasons Pakistan covertly backed the Taliban were simple enough: open up trade routes to Central Asia, including a natural gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan, and win influence with the Taliban regime to provide a secure rear in any confrontation with Hindu India. Four years on, those hopes are in tatters. Central Asia's vaunted markets are as distant as ever, and the governments of Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Russia are confounded by Islamabad's support for what they see as a dangerously destabilizing fundamentalism. Last month, Unocal, the lead company in a consortium to build a trans-Afghan natural gas and oil pipeline, finally pulled out of the deal -- dismayed by falling oil prices and under fire from women's and human-rights organizations in the U.S.

Moreover, Islamabad has secured little real influence over the notoriously prickly Taliban. Four years of engagement and two-and-half years of diplomatic recognition have won no softening of Taliban positions on gender and social issues that might have made Islamabad's support less embarrassing. "As often as not they don't listen to us," says a Pakistani official.

By contrast, the Taliban's influence is growing in Pakistan by the day. Along the Afghan frontier, Taliban-style groups have emerged, championing a brand of shariah law that owes as much to tribal practice as to the Koran. In late December, the Jamiat-e Ulema Islami -- the party whose seminaries gave birth to the Taliban movement -- launched a campaign to clamp down on TVs and "sinful" videos.

None of this is surprising, given the number of young Pakistanis who have fought or who are fighting in the Taliban ranks. But it does give rise to the following scenario: Young zealots wanted by the police for sectarian violence in Pakistan find sanctuary with a foreign movement supported by Pakistan's own intelligence apparatus.

The growth of Taliban-style extremism in Pakistan is already worrying more secular strata of society. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has slammed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's controversial suggestion that the speedy Taliban justice system might have its uses in Pakistan. What she carefully omitted to point out was that the Taliban got where they are thanks to active support from her own government in 1994-95.

Where Islamabad's Afghan policy is headed is unclear. With its back to the wall economically, Pakistan does not have the means single-handedly to finance a Taliban military campaign that might drag on for years. Saudi Arabia, in the past the main financial supporter for the Taliban, has already cut back its ties with Kabul over the movement's involvement with Osama bin Laden.

If, as Pakistani diplomats insist, Islamabad is urging the Taliban to negotiate, the message has yet to gain a following. Yet Pakistan cannot afford simply to walk away from the now powerful Taliban or impose sanctions that would arouse the wrath of the vocal Islamist lobby at home. In a nutshell, Islamabad is confronting the wisdom of the Chinese adage: When you ride a tiger, the tricky part is getting off.