Pakistanis know that, before long, the world will forget them again. Lindsey Hilsum reports

The young men on the streets of Peshawar and Quetta wave posters showing Osama Bin Laden like a saint under a rain of fighter bombers. A collage of magazine cut-outs places the heads of Blair and Bush on the bodies of dogs. "Another type of American dog - Tony Blayer," reads the legend, in red felt-tip. Small boys brandish plastic pistols. If the TV cameras are around, they'll burn an American flag. The leader of the extremist Jamaat-e-Islami party, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, whips up a frenzy of anti-Americanism among his supporters. His organisation is tiny, but he has something in common with a broad segment of Pakistani society - he sent his two sons to study not in Saudi Arabia or any other Muslim state, but in America.

Americans might see this as hypocrisy or opportunism. Pakistanis are more likely to see it as a sign of the troubled relationship they have with America, a relationship which becomes more difficult with each day that bombs fall on Afghanistan.

A Pakistani friend, who lives a shifting life between two continents, recounts how, some years ago, she took her two children through Pakistani immigration, where they showed their US passports. The official stared at the documents with wonder and resentment. "They're really Americans?" he asked, as he stamped the pages. "Well, they'll never have to worry."

In the past six weeks, Americans have learnt that they do have to worry. Disease and terrorism are suddenly real threats. They are experiencing something of the insecurity and fear that is daily life for all but the monied elite in Pakistan. But this shared experience - and the shared purpose in defeating terrorism, as declared by Presidents Bush and Musharraf - cannot hide the resentment many Pakistanis feel.

Pakistan is suddenly the essential nation, in a rerun of the 1980s, when General Zia ul-Haq was crucial to the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan. Sanctions are lifted, debts have been rescheduled, billions of dollars of aid are flowing in and - presumably - CIA agents rumble around the Afghan border as they did in the old days.

But where was America, ask Pakistanis, in the intervening years of corruption and violence and burgeoning poverty, when Pakistan's own decline mirrored the desperate descent next door in Afghanistan? Now America needs Pakistan, and Pakistan has no choice but to oblige, but what will happen when America has got what it wants?

General Musharraf has managed to turn these complex feelings and obligations to his advantage. He is wearing well his rise from pariah military dictator to world statesman. His grey hair tinged with white at the temples, he has discarded his uniform for a suit, and answers journalists' questions with urbane humour. When asked why he won't open the border to Afghan refugees, he points out that two and a half million Afghans have been in Pakistan for up to 20 years. "If you give us $100 a month for every refugee for as long they stay, then - fine - I'll open the border, let them in!"

After Colin Powell and Tony Blair came Gerhard Schroder and foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Greece and France, trying to shore up a regime they previously saw as an embarrassment, salaaming the nation that did the most to nurture the Taliban, and is now forced to help destroy the monster it created.

Musharraf has reshuffled his army's top brass, arrested a few religious extremists, and allowed others the safety valve of demonstrations. He is now holding a round of meetings with local political leaders and mayors, to promise that the new US aid will filter down to them, and not stay locked up in the grubby white ministry buildings in Islamabad. As a result, he can go off to New York to dine with the UN secretary-general and President Bush this month, confident that neither coup nor revolution will oust him in his absence.

But these policies will not work indefinitely, and he knows it. America describes this campaign as a struggle between good and evil, but to Pakistan - wedged between a hostile India on one side, and a chaotic Afghanistan on the other - nothing is so simple. Gauging Pakistani public opinion is a difficult art, but few support the bombing of Afghanistan, and the letters pages of newspapers are full of condemnation of the "American terrorism". Few believe that it will do anything but hurt civilians and make the rubble bounce.

US generals may express surprise that the Taliban are tenacious fighters, but no one around here ever thought otherwise. Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, blames the Taliban for "inviting in al-Qaeda", but people here know that it was the previous Afghan government, under Burhanuddin Rabbani, which offered sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden; the Taliban simply inherited him. To Americans, such details are mere history. But to Pakistanis and Afghans, history is the only way to define their identity.

Globalisation is meant to make all people feel part of one world, but before 11 September, it only served to make most Pakistani devotees of satellite television and the internet understand just how marginalised they are. American lionisation of their government, American fighter jets in their skies and American money have not changed that; and the indefinite bombing of Afghanistan can only make Pakistanis more resentful of the nation where everyone wants to send their children to study.

Lindsey Hilsum is diplomatic correspondent for Channel 4 News

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