America's President-elect was being watched a lot closer to the front lines of the US War on Terror than he may have been aware on Saturday night.

As Barack Obama's face shone from a huge wide screen television into the officers' mess at a Pakistani army fortress in Khar, in the tribal area of Bajaur, the room shook to heavy artillery blasting from gun positions at the gates. Barely a mile up the road Pakistani troops traded fire with Taleban raiding parties.

“I want to increase non-military aid,” Mr Obama, interviewed on CNN, announced to a handful of officers between explosions. “But we also have to help make the case that the biggest threat to Pakistan right now is not India, which has been their historical enemy, it is actually the militants within their own borders.”

The officers did not look overly convinced, despite the shenanigan outside.

India is their old enemy, as key to the Pakistani military psyche as the Turks are to the Serbs and the Israelis are to the Palestinians. Most officers are convinced that Nato's involvement in Afghanistan will be fleeting and that India is set on dominating the vacuum created by a Western withdrawal. This fear causes the military to cling to its concept of Afghanistan as a place of “strategic depth” for Pakistan's interests. Hence their past overt support of the Taleban and the lingering accusations that elements of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, continue to support Afghan insurgents even now as a safeguard for the future.

Nato and America may not like this military thinking, and the strategy may have backfired on Pakistan but it is nevertheless an understandable result of the regional power games fought between the ISI and its Indian counterpart, the RAW.

Until there is a sea change in Pakistan's sense of enmity with India the discord between Pakistan and its nominal Western allies is set to run deep. As Mr Obama's interview finished, a major turned to speak to me. It was no coincidence that he, multilingual, charming and erudite, was a senior intelligence officer in the corps headquarters. Which made his words all the more alarming.

“The trouble is I don't believe bin Laden exists,” he said. “I think he is a myth. A creation.”

It was not encouraging to hear this from an intelligence officer in Bajaur, reputed to be the hideout of bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and where for the past two months Pakistani troops have been locked in battle with thousands of insurgents, including foreign fighters. Since August 83 soldiers have died and more than 300 have been wounded fighting along a stretch of road just eight miles long.

That the major saw this bloodshed as in part the result of a US conspiracy testified to the extent of America's ill-conceived and muddled strategy in Pakistan, which so far has failed to secure a single security objective there since 2001. Al-Qaeda remains effective in the country. The tribal areas bordering Afghanistan are still a sanctuary for militants of every description who are enjoying a nationwide sense of ascendancy rather than diminution. The Pakistan Government is divided as to how to approach the problem, as is the Army. And the Pakistani population is utterly dubious about its role in the war. Many believe that the violence blighting their lives has been caused by US involvement in their affairs.

“This is not a war between Pakistan and the Taleban,” a teacher who fled to a refugee camp to escape fighting in Bajaur told me. “Our Government has made a monster out of the Taleban just to get money from America.”

There has been no lack of dollars thrown at Pakistan. The official figures state that the US gave Islamabad $10 billion in aid between 2002 and 2007. Yet in the militancy's heartland, the seven semi-autonomous tribal agencies - the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) - 96 per cent of US aid has gone to the military. Most of this has been spent through coalition support funds that reimburse the Pakistani Army for counter-insurgency operations. These funds have given many Pakistanis the impression that their soldiers have become little more than mercenaries fighting someone else's war.

Of American aid devoted to Fata, only 1 per cent has been spent on development. The 3.5 million Pashtun population that live there suffer the worst poverty in Pakistan. Literacy runs at barely 17 per cent, unemployment at 80 per cent. The education system, such as it exists at all, has collapsed and clinics and doctors are a rarity. Small wonder Fata has become a militant playground.

Mr Obama's victory offers a degree of hope. Joseph Biden, the Vice-President-elect, has been a longstanding critic of George Bush's policy in Pakistan, and is co-sponsor of the Enhanced Participation with Pakistan Bill. Due to be passed imminently by Congress, it will give Pakistan $7.5 billion in non-military assistance over the next five years and could be seen as the vanguard of a new, more holistic strategy.

If Mr Obama wants Pakistan to re-identify its enemies, he must get the Pentagon to redefine its aims too. So far there has been little evidence of unified military strategy between America and Pakistan. Pakistan and Nato accuse each other of allowing insurgents to cross the border into one another's territory for attacks. Both accusations are correct.

US drones strike al-Qaeda and Afghan Taleban targets in Fata but ignore Taleban groups that stay within Pakistan to kill Pakistani soldiers. Similarly, Pakistan's forces show little inclination to attack militant groups based in Fata whose sole aim is to attack Nato in Afghanistan. If America's and Nato's war is to be Pakistan's too, then they should at least agree on who they are fighting.

And if that effort is to have any chance of success, it will have to incorporate long-term and intense regional diplomacy, massive financial assistance to develop Fata and encourage an overhaul of Pakistan's Army from within.

“We need a slow, steady evolution in the understanding of each other's limitations and constraints,” one general admitted. He seemed so reasonable I wondered if India had escaped his mind. It had not. “If you want us to deliver,” he added in sudden warning, “then you must build our country's capacity. If not, then we will go with our own threat assessment as to who is giving us the most heat.”

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