Some officials worry aloud that a year of unrest, violence and political intrigue in Pakistan may undercut Bush’s last chance to root out Osama bin Laden from the lawless territory where al-Qaeda has regrouped. Likewise, they fear, the unrest could cripple a renewed administration effort to turn around the war against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

If serious divisions emerge in Pakistan’s army, they could also threaten the security of Pakistan’s potent nuclear arsenal, something that Bush administration officials worry about far more than they let on publicly.

Over the past year, the Musharraf government has quietly sent officials to Washington to assure Bush administration officials that even if the general were ousted or assassinated, the mechanisms for controlling both weapons and nuclear technology— safeguards that Pakistan acknowledges it has put together with aid from other countries— are now unbreakable. And his designated successor, the newly appointed vice-chief of the Pakistani Army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is widely seen as a pro-American moderate.

Several officials who have left the administration say they are less than sanguine about the prospect that Pakistan’s troubles will just settle down. “We have to remember that the US doesn’t have very much capability to affect internal developments” in Pakistan, said Robert D. Blackwill, the former American ambassador to India and a senior official in the National Security Council during Bush’s first term.

“What I am struck by are the trends we see today: the North-West Province is ungovernable and a sanctuary for terrorists,” he said. “The politics are fractured and deeply unstable, Musharraf is weaker, and the army is uncertain which way it will go.”

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