Expect the West to put more pressure on Pakistan to deal with the Taliban -- and expect that pressure to go nowhere, writes the Beeb's Paul Dahar.
2007 probably won't see the last of them.
Next year, NATO's conventional armies will keep finding themselves hassled and slowly bled by a hit and run guerrilla force that is increasingly applying the lessons insurgents have learned fighting Western forces in Iraq.
Next year the British and Americans will probably finally jump off the fence and side with Kabul and insist that Pakistan seals the border properly and stops giving the Taleban somewhere to retreat to.
But the realities of geography and politics will prevail. In their hearts the Pashtuns know that one day international troops will leave and that no matter how successful the Nato troops may be, some remnants of the Taleban will remain. ...
Islamabad always drew a distinct between Al-Qaeda and the Taleban post 11 September, 2001.
Despite American moaning, they began drawing a distinction between 'good' Taleban and 'bad' Taleban.
'Good' Taleban they could control through the spooks in Pakistan's controversial intelligence agency, the ISI. 'Bad' they couldn't and it cost them hundreds of their soldiers' lives during heavy fighting in the tribal areas.
It was also costing President Musharraf credibility within the armed forces as he carried out what many in the Pakistani establishment thought was somebody else's (ie Washington's) foreign policy agenda.
So in 2006 Pakistan stopped beating around with Bush and did a deal in North Waziristan with pro-Taleban militants which formalised what everyone suspected was the unofficial policy of the ISI anyway.
Overnight all the Pakistan-based Taleban turned into 'good' Taleban; as long as they didn't attack Pakistani soldiers.
The move may not have pleased his western chums, but Gen Musharraf knew that he had to do something to stop the Taleban-like militancy spreading out from the border tribal areas into the towns and cities of the North West Frontier Province.
There was a real fear that the relatively moderate Islamic parties that make up the six-party alliance of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or more importantly its main pillar, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his Jamiat Ulema Islam party, might become irrelevant.
And so five years on, 2006 saw policy turn almost full circle to something like the pre-9/11 environment.
The article notes that Pakistan has both parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007.
If Musharraf's actions prove successful in stemming the rise of the religious parties then he'll be able to convince his increasingly sceptical western allies that he really does know best.