Pakistan's foe may be its new friend

Pakistan, goodness knows, deserves some uplifting news, given its predicament. In one of its provinces, Baluchistan, a decades-long insurgency continues to rage. In Northwest Frontier Province, the Pakistani wing of the Taliban rules swaths of territory and goes unchallenged by the army, or bloodies the military's nose when challenged. Adjacent are the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, havens for Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban and the most likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden.

The threat posed by Islamic militancy and terrorism leaves Pakistan's newly formed democratic government with only bad choices. To please the United States, it has to deal more aggressively with both threats -- and take bigger losses in the process. But if it starts getting tougher, it not only risks alienating the public, which dislikes Pakistan's role as America's adjutant in the war on terrorism, it could cause the violence to spread.

On top of all this, Pakistan's economy is a mess: Inflation is running at 25%, unemployment is at more than 8% and rising, foreign currency reserves are drying up, and the country could default on its debt.

So what's the good news? Oddly enough, it has to do with Pakistan's nemesis, India, and what is arguably the biggest problem separating them: Kashmir. This is the Muslim-majority territory over which they have fought two full-scale wars and had countless skirmishes.

Separating the Indian-administered segment of Kashmir from that run by Pakistan is the "line of control," established after the first Kashmir war ended in 1948. Despite a 2004 truce, Indian and Pakistani troops traded gunfire there as recently as July, and India routinely excoriates Pakistan for sending terrorist groups across it to wreak havoc in Kashmir and to aid separatists, whom India has fought since 1989 in a war that has claimed 60,000 lives.

Yet it is this dicey demarcation that now brings (some) good cheer. On Tuesday, trade began to flow across this cease-fire line in both directions for the first time. Trucks laden with merchandise headed in search of markets; some heady entrepreneurs in India and Pakistan dream that, if all goes well, this new pathway will provide access to larger markets beyond their two countries. Kashmiris cautiously hope that there will be additional steps -- bus service between the two parts of Kashmir was opened in 2005 -- that increase contact between their communities, which have been cruelly separated for 60 years.