Print edition: 
While Americans are focused on the U.S. fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, an equally critical battle is being waged by the Pakistani army against Taliban groups next door.
The need for U.S.-Pakistani military cooperation in the struggle against militants has never been greater. Yet America's relationship with Pakistan and its army is so clouded by mistrust that full cooperation cannot happen.
That gap is something neither side can afford. It undercuts NATO efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and harms Pakistani efforts to crush the jihadis who have become an existential threat to their state.
A visitor to Pakistan can find it hard to believe that we and they are engaged in struggles that should be complementary.
Most Americans know that al-Qaida's leadership, and key Afghan Taliban leaders, are thought to be hiding in the mountainous areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border. But fewer know that the Pakistani military launched several major campaigns against some of the country's own Taliban groups, after failed efforts to cut peace deals. A serious effort to clear a nasty group known as TTK (Tehreek-e-Taliban) out of South Waziristan is going on now.
In retaliation, TTK has launched a wave of suicide bomb attacks that have turned the regional capital of Peshawar into a mini-Baghdad, circa 2005. Pakistani television screens are filled with scenes of carnage, bloodied bodies and civilians weeping.
Meantime, Islamabad's roads are laced with checkpoints; blast barriers have gone up around big hotels and United Nations offices.
Yet you'd be hard-pressed to get the sense that Pakistanis and Americans are fighting on the same side. Rampant anti-Americanism among ordinary Pakistanis spawns bizarre conspiracy theories. One typical fantasy: A retired Pakistani general, Mirza Aslam Beg, claims that U.S. military helicopters spirited the top TTK leadership across the border to safety in Afghanistan.
The U.S. and Pakistani militaries have well-known grievances against each other. Among them: Pakistanis think the United States made a mess in Afghanistan that has fed militancy in their country. U.S. officials think the Pakistanis are protecting Afghan Taliban leaders because they believe the Taliban may one day return to power in Kabul and provide Pakistan with an ally against India, a claim Pakistani brass reject.
What is clear, however, is that each military could use more help from its counterpart.
The Pakistani military wants more U.S. help — and pressure on the Afghan government — to try to seal the border so Pakistani jihadis cannot escape, and Afghan jihadis enter. Moreover, say analysts in the country, the Pakistani army wants any U.S. drone attacks to target the Taliban leaders they are fighting in South Waziristan.
But the White House wants Pakistan to expand the attacks to target Pakistani locales where Afghan Taliban members, such as Mullah Omar, supposedly are hiding.
In other words, each side is focused on the particular Taliban groups that it sees as a security danger. Yet these groups are so linked that it's hard to see how they can be checked without a joint effort.
There are some signs of progress. U.S. officials say that U.S.-Pakistani military cooperation is on the upswing.
Yet the gap in perceptions is so wide, the suspicion of U.S. intentions so ingrained, that it's hard to imagine the trust deficit being bridged in the short term.
