- guardian.co.uk, Sunday April 21 2002 01.13 BST
It's three months since I was last here, and eight months since I, and several hundred other reporters, arrived in the days after September 11th to report the first stage of America's war on terror. It's quieter now of course. The roof of the Marriott hotel is empty. There are no TV networks willing to pay $500 a day for a few square metres of concrete for their satellites and stand ups. The Taliban embassy is no longer Taliban.
General Pervaiz Musharaf is now as firmly in charge as ever. In two weeks Pakistan will vote in a referendum on whether he should be allowed to appoint himself president for the next five years - a significant consitutional change. He is expected to win easily. This is largely because he is still very popular. Although loaded questions and a complete lack of serious opposition will help too.
In January, to every normal person's delight, Musharaf launched what appeared to be a concerted campaign to root out the hardline militants that have been the scourge of Pakistan for decades. It now appears to be faltering. A large proportion of the 1,500 activists rounded up have been released and men like Fazl-ur- Rehman, the leader of the Jama'at-e-ulema-e-Islami organisation, have reappeared on the national stage. Rehman is not just a supporter of the Taliban but was a father figure to many of them.
According to some commentators, Musharaf thinks he needs the support of the Islamic right in the referendum, though afterwards he will go on with his project of ending Pakistan's hardline Islamic 'Kalashnikov culture'. But it would be a grave shame if the president threw away the best opportunity Pakistan has ever had to rid itself of the extremism and violence that was the legacy of the Afghan war - the first one against the Soviets - for short-term, personal political reasons.
At least the trial of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal correspondent killed by militants in Karachi is going ahead. In the dock is Saeed Omar Sheik, the British-born LSE educated extremist who, it is alleged, organised the murder.
Actually the evidence against him is thin and, the police say, it is quite likely he 'just' kidnapped the journalist and then handed him over to another group who killed him. The actual killers are unlikely to ever be found. Nor is Pearl's mutilated body. The authorities are, perhaps oddly, rather proud of their handling of the case.
The murder has changed things for journalists working in Pakistan. Even last October I thought nothing of travelling, illegally and in disguise, high up into the Khyber Pass to meet a senior al-Qaeda figure in the house of a supporter. We spoke for hours and I stayed the night, surrounded by heavily armed tribesmen, bin Laden fans to a man. It never occurred to me that I might be taken hostage or worse. Now reporters are being much more careful.
Or most of them anyway.
One who isn't is Ahmed Zaidan, the Islamabad correspondent for al'Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic language TV channel that has been such a thorn in the side of both the Bush administration and the Arab regimes in the Gulf alike. I have known Ahmed for five yearws. He has recently returned from a five day trip through Pakistan's badlands, the autonomous areas along the Afghan border where al-Qaeda support is strongest and where bin Laden's fighters are supposed to be regrouping with the help of the local Pashtoon tribes. Zaidan is well enough known to al-Qaeda to be invited, just over a year ago, to the wedding of bin Laden's eldest son in Kandahar. He is unlikely to be held hostage.
Ahmed joined me for a coffee at the dreadful Marriott. He told me that the idea there are more than a thousand al-Qaeda fighters regrouping in and around the Pakistani town of Miram Shah in the tribal areas just over the border, ready to take on the British Marines who have just deployed in the area, was rubbish. A couple of hundred fighters were there at most, he said. He had also found that the Pentagon's claims of killing several hundred al-Qaeda men during Operation Anaconda last month were also hugely exaggerated. Around 40 fighters died, he said. Ahmed is a precise and honest reporter so there's no reason to doubt him.
But in talking to tribesmen, the senior Taliban fugitives and the al-Qaeda people who were around Miram Shah Ahmed did pick up one constant theme: the impact of the Israeli actions in the West Bank. The anger coursing through the area, and the Islamic world more generally, has boosted what was flagging support for the apparently defeated bin Laden and his extremists. It has also boosted the fugitive al-Qaeda leadership's own resolve.
According to Ahmed, bin Laden and his key advisors are preparing to ramp up operations in coming weeks. have always been fine judges of public mood on 'the Arab street' and have now begun a new PR offensive - thus the video delivered direct to al'Jazeera in Qatar, the emailed statement to al'Hayat and the new web postings. More concrete actions may well follow.
With Israel and Palestine in flames, with the British troops hunting through the hills of Afghanistan, with bin Laden still on the run and angry and hurt, Kashmir still tense, the Arab regimes sweating hard as events crash around them, I think we can expect a hot summer.
· Jason Burke is The Observer's Chief Reporter. This is the first in a new series of Jason's fortnightly terrorism dispatches which will appear online in Observer Worldview.
