The discovery of a secret CIA airbase in southern Pakistan exposes the dangerous double game that Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s President, has to play as he tries to manage relations both with the United States and with a fiercely anti-American public.

While he is criticised in Washington for surrendering to the Taleban by allowing Sharia in the Swat Valley, he will be lambasted at home for allowing the Americans to use a Pakistani base to launch drone attacks on his own territory.

His dilemma mirrors the identity crisis Pakistan has suffered ever since it won independence from Britain in 1947 and especially since it backed the US-led War on Terror in 2001: is it to be an Islamist state, or a secular democracy?

There is no easy answer for the widower of Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister who was assassinated in December 2007.

Like his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf, Mr Zardari appears to have tacitly allowed the US to carry out the attacks, and use Pakistani bases to launch Predator drones, armed with Hellfire missiles.

Yet he faces a new US Administration that appears determined to strike al-Qaeda and Taleban militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas far harder than had been seen under Mr Musharraf.

As a democratically elected President, Mr Zardari is also under greater pressure to protest publicly about the attacks, especially when there are civilian casualties.

Failing to do so would be political suicide in a country where 97 per cent are Muslim, and many oppose the support for the US campaign. In doing so, however, he risks being embarrassed by revelations like the one about Shamsi, and fuelling anti-American sentiment.

Lisa Curtis, a former CIA analyst who worked at the US Embassy in Pakistan in the 1990s, said: “He’s in a very difficult position. The US has said, ‘We’re going to do this because the intel is getting better and better. We’ve hit some high-value targets and collateral damage has been very little,’ ” she told The Times. “At the same time, he has to protest publicly because this is Pakistani territory and a lot of Pakistanis are very unhappy.”

The US increased drone attacks and even sent special forces into tribal areas last summer after apparently losing faith in the commitment of the Pakistani Army. President Obama has pledged to review US policy in the region, but made it clear that he would continue with the drone attacks.

US officials say drones have killed several high-value targets in the past year, including Usama al-Kini, the al-Qaeda operations chief in Pakistan, in an attack on January 1. An American dossier leaked last week revealed a list of other prominent victims, including Rashid Rauf, the British chief suspect in the plot in 2006 to blow up a transatlantic airliner.

Some Pakistani officials support the attacks but most see them as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, and even in the US some experts question the efficacy of the tactics.

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