Afghanistan will never know peace as long as the neighbouring tribal areas of Pakistan offer safe havens to the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies. The American missile attack that destroyed one such haven yesterday, reportedly killing Rashid Rauf, the British militant, and four other men, was the 21st airstrike on Pakistan in three months. The accuracy of this particular strike and the death of Rauf, who was wanted for masterminding a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners in 2006, signal that western intelligence may finally be capable of penetrating the Islamists on the wild frontier where they have long felt secure. Osama Bin Laden is thought to be hiding out in the same border country. Even he, the supreme survivor, may have slept less soundly on his camp bed last night.

Yet US airstrikes on Pakistan also carry clear dangers for the West. By no means all the missile attacks have been precise. Pakistan’s resentment of assaults on its sovereignty has been compounded by understandable outrage at the deaths of civilians. President Ali Asif Zardari, who was propelled to power by the assassination of his wife Benazir Bhutto, knows all too well the risks of swelling the extremists’ ranks in his increasingly turbulent country.

If meticulously targeted killings are a necessary evil in the short term, they form no part of a long-term solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, who oversaw the “surge” of troops that reduced violence in Iraq, is now weighing the options for Afghanistan in his new role as head of US Central Command. He will be ready with a plan when Barack Obama, the president-elect, takes office on January 20.

One clue to American thinking came yesterday in reported remarks by Robert Gates, the defence secretary, who may stay on under President Obama. Mr Gates said he favoured a surge of forces which was estimated by his press secretary at “well north of 20,000” troops. Afghanistan is not Iraq but General Petraeus’s experience will tell him the challenge is far more than military. Just as Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq were harnessed to drive out Al-Qaeda, so tentative moves are under way to turn Afghanistan’s elders against the Taliban, using hard cash as an incentive.

Curbing the Taliban will ultimately require not only military gains but also political reconciliation and economic development. In the meantime, missile attacks across the border are likely to continue. There is one target President George W Bush would love to strike before he steps down: Bin Laden has every reason to be more than usually alert to danger in the last 58 days of the Bush administration.