For centuries, fighting and lawlessness have been part of the fabric of this frontier town. But in the past year, Pakistan’s war with Islamic militants has spilled right into its alleys and bazaars, its forts and armouries, killing policemen and soldiers and scaring its famously tough citizens.

There is a sense of siege here, as the Islamic insurgency pours out of the adjacent tribal region into this city, one of Pakistan’s largest, and its surrounding districts.

The Taliban and their militant sympathisers now hold strategic pockets on the city’s outskirts, the police say, from where they strike at the military and the police, order schoolgirls to wear burqas and blow up stores selling DVDs, among other acts of violence.

Suicide bombings, other bombings and missile attacks occurred on an average of once a week here in 2007, according to a tally by the city’s police department. In 2006, while there were occasional grenade attacks and explosions, the authorities did not record a single suicide bombing or rocket attack inside the city.

The proximity of Peshawar to Pakistan’s tribal areas near the Afghan border, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda have regrouped in the past two years, makes the city a feasible prize for the militants in Pakistan’s quickly escalating internal strife that pits the Islamic extremists against the American-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf.

Though few here believe that the Taliban will rule anytime soon, the police and residents say that by the standards of counterinsurgency warfare, the extremists are doing well. They have undermined public faith in the government, sown distrust and made the police fearful for their lives. The extremists have selected the police and the army, two important pillars of the Pakistani state, as particular targets.

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