Pakistan is engaged in its own gap-closing process -- it has turned its military full-force on the Taliban. Pakistan's vigorous assertion of state sovereignty in the tribal areas along its Afghanistan border is a major political event. Instead of ceding sovereignty to the mountain tribes -- it's tough country to patrol and pacify -- Pakistan is now extending sovereignty, meter by meter, as its military pursues the Taliban.
The Pakistani government isn't driven by theory, however, but a will to survive. The 2008 attack on Mumbai, India, by Islamist terrorists was supposed to draw the Pakistani Army away from operations along the Afghan border and ignite a new Indo-Pakistani war. Instead, India presented Pakistan with an implicit ultimatum: Stop the Islamic terrorists, or we will do it.
The Taliban's depredations in the Swat Valley provided unconvinced Pakistanis with a stark choice between rule by violent tribal theocrats wedded to fossil sectarian isolation and rule by a corrupt, stumbling, autocratic, but globally connected, future-oriented and trying-to-modernize central government in Islamabad.
Don't expect Pakistan to close its tribal gap once and for all. That is a century-long project. Squeezing this gap, however, could produce a new psychological and political landscape in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Relentless pressure will force al-Qaida terrorists operating in the tribal areas to either surrender, die or flee. Bet on flight.
Which is why "patrolling nowhere" (a soldier's tactical version of "watching a strategic gap") will continue. This month Islamists calling themselves al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb fought with security forces in Mali. The middle of the Western Sahara is a big gap. Do events in Mali matter? Before Sept. 11, few Americans thought local politics in Afghanistan mattered.