With militants now massing at the gates of main north-western city, President Pervez Musharraf faces a new challenge on his return from a foreign tour, analysts and officials said.
After a week-long charm offensive in Europe aimed at convincing Western allies he can tackle al Qaeda, Musharraf will fly home this week to find militants clashing with security forces just outside bustling Peshawar.
In the nearby tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, troops are still battling fighters led by the main suspect in the killing of Benazir Bhutto, adding to global concerns for the stability of the nuclear-armed nation.
Analysts said Musharraf must resolve a long-standing dilemma - go after the militant leadership and risk even more suicide attacks in Pakistan's big cities, or hold back and see the insurgents push further into the country.
"These militants have been expanding their influence in the north-west, and it has been happening for quite a few days," Brigadier Mahmood Shah, the former secretary for the tribal areas during 2003 and 2004, told AFP.
"The government is reacting late to the threat and the situation," added Shah, who was in charge of the region at a time of massive military operations to drive out militants.
Former army general Musharraf repeatedly insisted during meetings in Europe last week that Pakistan and its estimated 50 nuclear warheads are safe from any militant take-over.
But as he delivered his speeches, around 30 militants and two soldiers were killed on Friday in fighting involving helicopter gunships and tanks in the huge tribal weapons bazaar of Dara Adam Khel, on the outskirts of Peshawar.
Pakistani forces launched an operation to recover four trucks of ammunition that had been hijacked by rebels - but the militants responded by blocking a major highway.
The army is denying that the clashes are linked to the situation in the tribal area of South Waziristan, the stronghold of al Qaeda-linked radical warlord and Bhutto assassination suspect Baitullah Mehsud.
Insurgents in Mehsud's area of control captured a paramilitary fort earlier this month and have attacked several others in a dramatic escalation of violence since Benazir's death that has cost more than 200 lives.
"This particular area and operation in Dara Adam Khel is detached from other parts of Fata," chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.
Dara Adam Khel was "known for criminal gang activities" and "criminal gangs have joined miscreants and the result of this is that they have hijacked explosives trucks," Abbas said.
"The whole Indus highway is blocked by these miscreants and the objective of this operation is to clear that road and provide relief to the people."
But Rahimullah Yousafzai, an analyst on tribal affairs and journalist, said the current battles near Peshawar and in South Waziristan were linked, due to a change in militant tactics.
"It is a diversion, they are trying to help militants in South Waziristan by engaging the army elsewhere," Yousafzai said. "The ammunition trucks were being carried by the army to Waziristan - this seizure was to help Baitullah Mehsud."
The army is still snuffing out the last pockets of rebellion from the only other previous hard-line uprising in country outside the tribal areas, which flared up in Swat Valley, a famed tourist spot, in September.
Before that, clashes between militants and the army were restricted to the conservative Pashtun tribal belt, where hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban militants took sanctuary after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Yousafzai said Taliban and al Qaeda militants were now present in most of North West Frontier Province and were abandoning a defensive policy of launching suicide attacks in retaliation for military operations.
"They are opening new battlegrounds," he said. "Whenever they gain strength they like to strike, it is a change in tactics. But they cannot fight for long, after a while they have retreat and flee to their stronghold."
Musharraf must now take tough decisions on how to handle the conflict, analysts said. "The army is facing difficulties because the more fronts these militants open, the greater the concerns about how long the army will keep fighting and on how many fronts," Yousafzai said.
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