US Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week praised the recent efforts of the Pakistani Army in bolstering a US military offensive into the semi-autonomous North West Frontier Province. The US wants to target militants who attack its occupation forces in neighboring Afghanistan and then flee into Pakistan to regroup and organize. Pakistan has a new civilian government, having replaced the long-time US ally, former General Pervez Musharraf. It faces a challenge that its predecessors have often grappled with: how to deal with the tensions between fundamentalist tribal militias including the Taliban, the Pakistani military that tacitly supports such militias, and the US government that finances the Army? Here in the United States, it has become a central foreign policy issue: what to do about Pakistan, simultaneously an ally in the “war on terror,” and a source of anti-US fundamentalism?