As US staging ground, Pakistan a powderkeg

"Sales of Kalashnikovs have been increasing over the past week," says Jam Shaid, a salesman in one of the shops stocked from roof to basement with small arms. "The price has risen from 8,000 rupees [about $120] to 16,000 rupees." If those prices sound steep, one can also buy a grenade for just $2, he adds.

The northwestern frontier's arms factories experienced a boom during the Afghan war to expel Soviet forces. Manufacturers struggled to keep up with demand. Many managers of the 400-plus arms factories in Pakistan maintain strong links with the Islamic jihad forces that continue to operate on both sides of the Pakistani-Afghan border.

Pakistani fears, both for their own forces and those of a foreign power, are linked to the fears of American security officials working in the US. British and American military trainers taught "holy warriors" during the Afghan war how to build bombs and engage in sophisticated sabotage tactics against Soviet forces. Skills included the understanding and use of sophisticated fuses, timers, and explosives, as well as remote-control devices for triggering mines and bombs.

There have been several bomb attacks in Pakistan during the two decades since the start of the Afghan war. Among them: In 1995, 26 people were killed in an attack carried out in Peshawar. In 1998, when US fighter jets bombed neighboring Afghanistan, grenade-wielding mobs attacked a guest house in the city center, only to be repelled by a manager who threatened them with his Kalashnikov. Just last week, several Pakistanis were killed by a car bomb in the nearby town of Sadar.

"The locals here can make all manner of modern and sophisticated weapons," says Shamin Shahid, Peshawar bureau chief of The Nation newspaper. "Much of that expertise was gleaned from American and British trainers during the Afghan war. Sophisticated and automatic weapons left behind by the former communists and Mujahideen in the Afghanistan war went into the hands of local influential criminals."

Bomb attacks in Pakistan are often carried out from moving vehicles - from cars and buses to bicycles and horse carts.

But if US forces do eventually launch attacks from any number of air bases across Pakistan, the greatest threat will not come from Afghans or Pakistanis, says Mr. Shahid.

"The idea of a suicide bomb attack has never caught on with the locals, for that the US troops will have to look out for Arabs coming across the border from Afghanistan, where most of them have fled at the moment," he says. "They will be able to move back into Pakistan with ease, however, with the thousands of refugees expected to flee famine and bombing. Some might dress in a lady's head-to-foot burqa, which would cover their face and disguise their sex."

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