ISLAMABAD, July 20: After dinner at the Islamabad Club, a private hangout for the capital’s elite, an intelligence officer leant across to speak in a low voice of a nightmare haunting the country’s security agencies.

“We fear that Pakistan could become like Iraq, with all these suicide bombings,” the officer said with a lowered voice. That was in March, after a spate of attacks killed close to 45 people.

Four months on, following the commando assault on the Lal Masjid, the security situation has become so bad that the officer’s bad dream appears all too real.

On Thursday alone, there were three suicide attacks, killing at least 54 people. They targeted police, the army, and engineers from China. Although the Chinese escaped unhurt their police escorts died.

Officials say militant soulmates of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, encouraged by the US failings in Iraq, believe they can destabilise Pakistan, and bring down President Gen Pervez Musharraf by using the same tactics as the Iraqi insurgents.

Over two weeks in July, more than 180 people have been killed, mainly soldiers and police, and mostly victims of suicide bombers.

To make matters worse a 10-month-old peace deal with pro-Taliban militants in the North Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border has broken down.

The carnage has come at a crucial time in the country’s history.

Elections are due by January, and Gen Musharraf is enduring his rockiest period since coming to power in a 1999 coup.

It leaves the government with a dilemma; appeasement doesn’t work, but heavy casualties could backfire too.

“We are not planning to surrender. We will fight it out,” a top official told Reuters on Friday.

“We cannot afford to alienate the people like the US government seems to have done over Iraq,” he said. “We do not want things to come to such a pass that the people say: “Enough, just make peace with the mullahs, we want peace.”

These days, President Musharraf refers to “Talibanisation” and extremism as the greatest dangers to Pakistan. He wants a second term to defeat them and protect a legacy of economic revival and lasting peace with India.

The president can steer his own re-election through the sitting assemblies before their dissolution in November, but if polls are to be free and fair, as Washington insists, he could end up sharing power with a prime minister not of his choosing.

And high-ups in the establishment privately fear Gen Musharraf could tire of juggling multiple crises without enough support, and simply quit.

“It is a scenario that could happen, if things get out of hand, given the kind of person he is,” said one senior official.

Gen Musharraf is constantly under pressure from the United States and NATO to do more to wipe out Taliban havens inside Pakistan.

He is battered by widespread criticism over the chief justice case. He has been frustrated by a lack of support from politicians in the ruling coalition throughout the judicial crisis.

And he’s frustrated by trying to engineer a deal with politicians such as ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto, angling for a way back from exile and into power.

To top it all, he’s constitutionally required to quit army by the end of the year.

At least, Gen Musharraf can probably count on the US backing.

“I guess the administration is going to stick with Musharraf all the way. It is too risky to look for alternatives ... and I would agree with them,” Stephen Cohen, South Asia expert at the Brookings Institute in Washington, remarked, adding that Gen Musharraf might not be an ideal leader, just the best available.

Gen Musharraf right now is steeling himself for fresh battles. The militants’ bomb campaign began after clashes broke out between paramilitary soldiers and militant students outside Lal Masjid on July 3.

The government says 102 people were killed in the subsequent siege and assault on the mosque.

US policymakers and Pakistani liberals believe sending in the troops means General Musharraf will now have to stamp out other hotbeds of militancy, and sever closet ties with opposition religious parties that have obstructed his liberal agenda.

“Now, having dealt with the mosque, it’s pretty much, you know, crossing a line and there’s no going back,” Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State, told journalists in Washington this week.