The Pakistani backlash you haven't heard about

Islamabad-Last Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it would soon built a new facility in southwestern Pakistan to house U.S. military officials. It was meant to be a bilateral "confidence-building measure" in the ongoing war on terror, according to U.S. officials -- but it has instead produced a furious backlash in Pakistan.

The title headlining the Pentagon's announcement was sober -- "Pakistan Army General Headquarters recently approved a U.S. Office of Defense Representative (ODR) and Coalition presence at the Pakistan military's 12 Corps HQ in Quetta" -- but it's clear that the new building was designed to symbolize the recent progress in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. The city of Quetta, the capital of the province of Balochistan, has long been a bone of contention between Washington and Islamabad, and the Western intelligence community community believes that the top Taliban commanders known as the Quetta Shura have been living there with the tacit permission of the Pakistani state.

Just days before the Pentagon's announcement, Islamabad had spurned a U.S. request to extend the drone campaign to Balochistan. "There is no question that Pakistan will allow drone attacks in Balochistan or any other part of the country," Foreign Office spokesperson Abdul Basit told a weekly media briefing in Islamabad on Nov. 26. "We are asking the Obama administration to revisit its drone policy as it is counterproductive."

The U.S. drones currently are restricted to the Waziristan region, where the Predator and Reaper pilotless vehicles have made 97 strikes this year so far, hunting for al Qaeda and its close Afghan ally, the Haqqani network. Opposition parties and the public at large have been quite critical of such strikes, which have reportedly killed more than 600 people in Waziristan.

Officially, the Pakistani government denies the Taliban Shura is even in Quetta, and locals laugh off such allegations: With so many U.S. informants in the area, they say, it would be impossible for Taliban to stay in Quetta for too long.

The Pakistani army knows it must make concessions as the NATO campaign in the border region steps up, and the U.S. intensifies its drone attacks in Waziristan. But in addition to tending to its relationship to the West, Pakistani leaders will need to placate their own population. We'll soon know how they plan on finessing that potential contradiction.