AND THEY WON'T GET SERIOUS UNTIL THEY ARE THE TARGETS:

‘A Fight To The Death’: In the battle against militants, President Zardari is increasingly isolated and besieged. (Fasih Ahmed, 10/01/08, Newsweek)

So far Zardari, who was elected president earlier this month, has managed to face down the lawyers' movement that weakened predecessor Pervez Musharraf's hold on power, and keep a step ahead of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his big political rival. But he is increasingly isolated and besieged. He faces a hostile local media, jittery allies and an increasingly unhappy population roiled by inflation and power outages and deeply distrustful of the United States. Zardari's visit to New York last week to attend the United Nations General Assembly—particularly his meeting with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin—has been assailed by politicians and pundits as evidence of some unholy alliance with the U.S. political establishment.

All this has weakened whatever meager support Zardari might have had for resisting an increasingly emboldened militancy. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif remains conspicuously non-committal to the war against terrorism. Speaking to reporters before leaving for Saudi Arabia two days after the attack, Sharif skirted the issue, instead calling on the government to address his party's constitutional concerns. Sharif's party has called for closer ties with Tehran and for rejection of international economic support, which many fear could be linked to anti-terrorism efforts. For Sharif, that fear is personal: he has received death threats from the militants, according to Pakistan's Ministry of Interior. "Pakistani politicians and media have become apologists for terrorists, not because they believe all this is right but because they hate America and because they fear themselves being targeted," Mansoor Hussain, a columnist for the Daily Times, told NEWSWEEK. "They do not want to admit or understand that this is a fight to the death for us as a nation."