President Obama's Toughest Challenge Abroad?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 20, 2009 — -- Now the hard part begins, and there may be no harder spot on the planet for President Barack Obama than Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The unreliable border between those two countries will help determine whether some of the tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops being sent to Afghanistan will come home in body bags; whether al Qaeda can launch another attack; and whether the Taliban can continue to destabilize both countries economically and politically.

As the U.S. military begins to double down in Afghanistan, adding as many as 30,000 troops to the 32,000 already there, much of Obama's attention will be on Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, seven mostly lawless districts along the border.

There, a coalition of Pakistani Taliban, Afghan Taliban, and criminals have helped make the last year-and-a-half the most violent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan's recent history.

In Afghanistan, more civilians and troops died last year than in any year since the war began. In Pakistan, militants have killed thousands of civilians and soldiers, sent suicide attackers into the heart of Pakistan's cities, and spread unprecedented fear -- conditions that have helped cripple the once growing Pakistani economy to the point of near default.

The problem is not a purely military one, analysts here insist. It is as much, if not more, about hearts and minds as it is about targeting al Qaeda's leaders with CIA unmanned predator drones.

"In the 80s, every Pashtun was with you. You helped make every Pashtun a mujahedeen against the Soviets," said Ayaz Wazir, a former Pakistani envoy to Afghanistan, referring to Pakistan and the U.S. successfully mobilizing much of Pakistani society against the Soviet occupation. "But today, every Pashtun is against you, because you are doing nothing but killing. You have to change that."