I didn’t want to find out. I left the increasingly heavy atmosphere of Peshawar for the manicured sanity of Islamabad, Pakistan’s distinctly un-Asian capital. As soon as the car left Peshawar I got the feeling of being a spectator, not a participant. Whereas Peshawar is full of tiny winding streets where a mob can be compressed and brought to boiling point, Islamabad is a city of American-style boulevards which could swallow all but the largest crowd.

Instead of worrying about being caught out in the streets by a chanting mob, we sat in the U.N. Club and entertained light-hearted thoughts of sweepstakes. “Seven to one on Monday night?” someone suggested at around 8:30 Sunday evening. An hour later Nick, a fellow English journalist, went to make a phone call and came back saying quite calmly, “Looks like it’s started.” In the background the stereo played a cocktail bar, Muzak version of “Fool on the Hill.”

We crowded around the TV to hear the news: air strikes on Kandahar, Jalalabad and Kabul. Just a month ago I had sat by the river in Jalalabad and watched the local gymnastics team practice in the setting sun. Now the same boys who I’d seen doing back flips and forward rolls were probably cowering in their cellars as cruise missiles tore into their shabby little town.

Leaving the BBC pundits to their endless discussion, we headed out onto the streets. Islamabad was almost completely quiet, which didn’t surprise our taxi driver Iqbal.

“Everyone goes to bed at 9 or 10 so they won’t know about the attack. Tomorrow you will see something.”

Security around the presidential palace and parliament building was tight, but no tighter than usual. In the center of Rawalpindi, Islamabad’s ugly sister city, a crowd of around 200 protestors had started fires and were chanting “America, America, terrorists, terrorists” but they were outnumbered by riot police and soldiers.

“I think this attack is totally baseless and unjustified. There is not even any single piece of proof against Osama bin Laden. No Muslim was involved in the attacks on America,” declared protestor Ahmad.

Bashir, a night watchman, said: “When people listen to the news everyone is in shock. The airplanes are getting not just Osama but all the nation of Afghanistan. Their response is to kill the whole country. Osama is simply one man. He is not the president, the prime minister, the foreign minister.”

He said he thought that Monday will see many demonstrations but dismissed the possibility of civil war in Pakistan.

Shakir Ali spoke for Pakistan’s moderates: “I am a Muslim but I am not in favor of Osama bin Laden. I believe these attacks are against terrorism, not Islam. Most of the people in the Taliban are terrorists.”

“The question of a peaceful resolution is over but most of the people will stay quiet,” said Tariq, a shop owner. “After these attacks Pakistan will receive big grants from America.”

Despite the chants of “God is great” and the calls for jihad, the mood was relatively lighthearted. Protesters held hastily scribbled placards still while the TV cameras focused in on them. A teenage boy pointed up to the sky, shouted something in Urdu and looked shocked. I quickly looked over my shoulder but there was nothing except the laughter of the boy and his friends. I was back to being a participant, not a spectator.

Most have joined relatives and friends in the Afghan refugee community of more than 2 million in this country. Many live in sprawling refugee camps, such as Peshawar’s Katcha Gari camp, a semi-permanent shantytown of mud houses, shops and mosques where fetid open sewers bisect the tiny alleyways and there are always freshly made coffins outside the carpenters’ workshops.

So far, fewer refugees have crossed the border than expected since Sept. 11. The UNHCR says that the 20,000 Afghans who had massed on the border in recent weeks have mostly disappeared, as fear of immediate U.S. attacks has faded. On Wednesday, President Bush announced a landmark $320 million humanitarian aid package that will try to keep Afghans from fleeing the country by providing aid within its borders, as well as provide food and shelter to the refugees. If the plan works, some experts say, the coming refugee crisis could be smaller than projected.

“Quite honestly, I’m surprised that there aren’t more refugees fleeing,” says Lionel Rosenblatt, president of Refugees International, who attended Bush’s speech outlining his humanitarian aid plan Wednesday. “If they use this funding wisely, there may be a hope to go beyond preventing a mass exodus and actually do some development work, the way we should have done when the Soviets left.”

Still, aid groups are gearing up for a new influx of refugees nonetheless. And the latest wave of Afghans will find themselves made even less welcome in Pakistan than previous arrivals. So far, security and ease of repatriation to Afghanistan, once the current crisis is over, have been the overriding concerns of the Pakistan government in making plans and choosing sites for new refugee camps.

The Pakistan government gave UNHCR a list of 100 possible sites to reconnoiter this week. Each camp will house between 10,000 and 20,000 refugees. All are situated within five miles of the Afghan border, an area of desert and mountains that would be a hostile and challenging environment in itself. But they are also located in Pakistan’s tense and unruly tribal areas, far from major cities.

The rationale behind the positioning of the camps is simple. Azhmat Hanif Arakzai, home secretary of Baluchistan province, said: “We do not want to make the same mistake as the 1980s, when the refugees were able to integrate within the community. We want to keep them together and provide aid for them together.”

Arakzai said he wanted to surround the camps by barbed wire. But Roy Herrmann, head of UNHCR in Peshawar, insists that will never happen.

“There won’t be any barbed wire,” Herrmann said. “They’re not going to be internment camps. We’re there to look after the refugees, not oppress them. But Pakistan wants the refugees to go back when the conflict is over so it will keep them in a very managed and controlled situation near to the border.”

He said there was little risk of the camps getting hit in any military action: “Scuds have come across the border before, but only rarely. We’re expecting to see more tactical, precision attacks in this conflict. But there will be security problems, especially for expat aid workers once hostilities have broken out. People in the tribal areas tend to be supportive of the Taliban.”

Indeed, the tribal areas are religiously conservative and home to many heavily armed, pro-Taliban groups who could even revolt against their own government if it sides too closely with the U.S. That could mean trouble for refugees as well, since many will likely come from ethnic groups or even political factions that do not support the Taliban. One aid worker from a major international agency, who refused to be named, said he was worried that aid groups would not have proper access to the camps because they were situated in the tribal areas.

“It’s not my favorite location,” says Doctors Without Borders spokesman Diderik van Halsema. “The further the camps are from the border the better. We think refugees should be housed at least 50 kilometers from their country of origin.”

The Pakistani government had originally wanted the camps to be situated on the Afghan side of the border, but relented after UNHCR alerted it to the problems this would cause. The UNHCR is hoping that the first camp, near the border crossing at Torkham, will be ready on Saturday, with more to be finished in the next week.

“Water is the big problem,” said Herrmann. The drought that has afflicted Afghanistan has also hit the border provinces of Pakistan, and the camps will face serious water shortages. The water table is very low and deep tube wells could take up to two months to dig. Shallow wells are a possibility, but many of the camps will rely on water being tanked in. A camp of 10,000 people will require an absolute minimum supply of 16 tankers per day, which will pose an obvious logistical challenge.

Afghans have been coming to Pakistan since the 1979 Soviet invasion. At first they were welcomed with open arms as fellow Muslims fighting to free their land from the infidel communists and soon integrated themselves into the economic and social life of Pakistan, particularly in Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar.

Peshawar’s public transport system is owned and run by Afghans, and across the city a huge number of Afghan restaurants serve the traditional Kabuli rice with raisins, carrots and chunks of meat, a dish that is a world away from Pakistan’s oily Mughal cuisine.

But despite their initial warm welcome, Afghans have not had an easy time in Pakistan. Harassment from the police and army is common. Before the present crisis, the Pakistan government was repatriating Afghans and threatening to demolish some of the permanent camps. As Pakistan’s economic situation has deteriorated, Afghans have been made scapegoats, which makes the recent pro-Taliban demonstrations particularly galling to many Afghans.

Atiyullah, a Tajik from northern Afghanistan now resident in Peshawar, said: “Most of the time the Pakistanis say ‘We don’t like Afghans. They come here, take our jobs and ruin our economy.’ Then a few days later they are saying Afghans are our brothers and we will die for them.”

There are also concerns that some refugees could be Taliban sympathizers ready to become a fifth column inside Pakistan, attacking Western and Pakistani targets in revenge for U.S. strikes on Afghanistan.

Disease is yet another reason for the Pakistani authorities to confine and isolate refugees. The region around the city of Jalalabad, only 40 miles from Pakistan, is on the verge of a malaria epidemic, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan (UNOCHA).

The malaria is the falciparum strain, the most deadly type found in Afghanistan, which can kill a child in five days. The spread of the disease is being exacerbated by the exodus of urban people into the countryside. Rural clinics are seeing double their usual number of patients as frightened Afghans leave the cities.

A UNOCHA spokesperson said that insecticides and 10,000 mosquito nets are being distributed in northeastern Afghanistan but relief work is being hampered by the Taliban’s refusal to allow local U.N. workers to use radio communications.

And as if to pile another torment upon long-suffering refugees, a hospital in the border town of Quetta Thursday confirmed that they are treating patients suffering from a disease similar to the Ebola virus. Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) attacks veins and arteries, leading to the collapse of major organs, with the sufferer bleeding to death from every orifice. One doctor said sufferers “literally melt in front of your eyes”.

Doctors at the Fatima Jinnah Chest and General Hospital have set up an isolation ward to treat the sick. The disease, which first appeared in June, has killed eight people so far. All were either Afghan refugees or lived close to the Afghan border. The hospital’s Dr. Taj Mohammad said, “There’s a real risk of a CCHF epidemic among Afghan refugees.”

The most optimistic view is that the aid package the U.S. announced Wednesday will stop the flow of refugees from Afghanistan and provide aid to those who have already left. But for now, a grimmer view prevails near the border: After fleeing to a country where they are not wanted, refugees will be kept in camps where water will be at a premium and disease a very real possibility. They will spend the winter in an inhospitable, remote and dangerous region in which foreign aid workers may be unable to work. Media access will be either denied or very tightly controlled. Their plight, like the plight of so many Afghans since 1979, may be hidden from view.

“Come to Islam, support Osama bin Laden and sacrifice yourselves. If America fights the Taliban then we will make graveyards full of Americans,” shouted Mulanna Mohammad Umar of the Jamiaat-e-Ulema-Islami, Pakistan’s largest Islamic extremist party.

“General Musharraf is shameful, stupid and against Islam,” he said.

Peshawar, 180 miles from Kabul, is the heart of fundamentalist Muslim opposition to the Musharraf government, and its willingness to let the U.S. use Pakistani airspace and intelligence for an attack on Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden. In Friday’s uprising, protesters chanted “Long live the Taliban” and “America is a dog” and burned a crude effigy of President Bush. One man shouted: “I will sacrifice my wife, my children and myself for Osama bin Laden.” Across the city men declared their willingness to die in a jihad if America attacks Afghanistan.

There were similar but smaller protests on Saturday but the demonstrations seemed to have lost momentum and by Sunday it was business as usual in the bazaar. But the stability of this tribal region will be key in determining whether Musharraf’s support for the U.S. effort to get bin Laden will unravel his government. If there is civil war in Pakistan, it will start here.

Virtually everyone in Peshawar’s bazaars follows the same line, regardless of political affiliation. Peshawar is the capital of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which borders Afghanistan. This staunchly conservative and pro-Taliban region is mainly populated by Pathans, the world’s largest tribal group, also called Pushtuns. The British-drawn Durrand Line splits the Pathan lands in two, with 10 million Pathans in Pakistan and 8 million in Afghanistan, where they make up 40 percent of the population.

“First we are Pathan, then we are Muslim, finally we are either Pakistani or Afghan,” runs a popular saying. The Taliban are almost all Pathans and American threats against them have enraged public opinion in this unruly province.

Gen. Musharraf’s problem is that his government has no control over much of the NWFP. The “tribal areas” are self-administering zones where modern Pakistani law is replaced by the ancient and rigid tribal traditions of “Pakhtunwali” — the way of the Pathans.

An important element of Pakhtunwali is “badal” or revenge. Blood feuds over “zar, zan, zamin” — gold, women, land — can last for generations. Every edition of the Khyber Mail includes a short report on a “death due to old enmity.” Families live in high-walled compounds complete with turrets and gun emplacements.

Women may be the cause of many feuds, but they are rarely seen outside the house. The Taliban’s insistence on the burqa is not an Islamic injunction but a tribal one. The absence of female faces in Kabul would be shocking if one arrived direct from the West. After a few days in Peshawar it comes as no surprise.

Having dinner with a Pathan friend, I asked to use the restroom. A boy was sent out first to shoo the women out of sight and ensure that the family’s honour was not compromised by an outsider seeing their womenfolk. Later we watched a wedding video in which the bride was never seen.

Since Pakhtunwali sanctions murder when honor is insulted, men carry a weapon with them at all times. Many of their guns come from the small town of Darra Adam Khel 40 miles south of Peshawar. Darra’s main street is lined with shops selling submachine guns, pump action shotguns, handguns and bullets. A Kalashnikov AK-47 sells for around $85. These guns aren’t originals but copies made by local craftsmen in hundreds of tiny factories, a cottage industry responsible for 1,000 weapons a week.

The Afghan war introduced heavier armaments into the tribal areas. Many rich tribesmen own artillery pieces, anti-aircraft missiles, surface-to-surface missiles and rocket launchers. Some powerful leaders are said to own Soviet tanks. Attempts to de-arm the tribal areas have usually resulted in standoffs between the tribals and the army in which the government has always backed down, acutely aware that the threatened tribesmen could put aside their differences and fight together.

Much of the money for these private armies comes from smuggling. Peshawar’s Karkhani Bazaar is the place for cheap, duty-free televisions, washing machines, perfumes and other luxury goods. Under international agreements customs duties are not paid on goods shipped from Karachi through to landlocked Afghanistan. Instead of going to the bazaars of Kabul and Kandahar most of these imports end up back in Pakistan, giving Pakistanis access to cheap consumer goods but crippling their government’s revenue base.

The NWFP is also a major route for drug smugglers. Shops openly sell heroin and hashish on the “tribal” side of Karkhani Bazaar, only 10 feet from the line that marks the limit of Pakistan’s draconian anti-drugs laws. Smugglers have even built houses that straddle the Pakistan-Afghan border to facilitate trade.

Many of the Taliban grew up in refugee camps around the NWFP and studied in local madrassas (Islamic schools). These madrassas gave impoverished Afghans and Pakistani students not just free education, food and shelter, but also membership of a Muslim brotherhood that offered purpose and certainty.

The Pakistani and Afghan students schooled together and they have fought together. Pakistani madrassa students have made up to 30 percent of the Taliban’s army. When the Taliban were defeated in the northern city of Mazaar-i-Sharif in 1997 the Haqqania madrassa, one of Pakistan’s largest, closed down for a month and sent 8,000 students to Afghanistan as reinforcements.

Throughout the 1990s, pro-Taliban groups staged uprisings across Pakistan’s Pathan belt in a bid to emulate the success of their Afghan comrades. They have performed public executions, banned TV and music, burned down cinemas and forced women from the streets.

“Pathan tribes are slipping towards fundamentalism,” according to Olivier Roy, author of “Afghanistan, from Holy War to Civil War.”

“Already small fundamentalist tribal emirates are appearing on Pakistani soil. The triumph of the Taliban has virtually eliminated the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

The political agents and intelligence operatives monitoring the tribal areas say that since the World Trade Center attacks and the uncompromising American response, religious fervor has gripped the tribesmen, and the mullahs have urged people to raise arms in support of the Taliban. The tribesmen have dug trenches and deployed their arsenals throughout their arid mountains.

Zorab, a tribesman from the Khyber Pass, told me: “We are ready. We have all kinds of weapons. Even our small children have Kalashnikovs.”

In his television address on Thursday, Gen. Musharraf estimated that only 15 percent of Pakistanis supported the extreme religious parties. But many of the other 85 percent agree with the extremists’ view that bin Laden could not possibly be behind the attacks.

“What these people [the extremists] say is immaterial. They have very little support,” said Dr. Hafani, an urbane, English-educated businessman. “But we should look at who might gain from this terrorist action. Russia and China would both like to poke America in the eye. India and Israel would gain by starting a war between the West and the Muslim world, and Israel has the resources to undertake such an attack. Osama has no such resources.”