HONG KONG — The Pakistani city of Peshawar, dusty, chaotic and venal, has long been a sanctuary for Taliban and Qaeda fighters in need of a break from the fighting in the adjoining tribal areas along the Afghan border. It's hard to articulate, but you go there and you can feel the danger.

The geography of the place, and its overall creepiness, are among the reasons why American diplomats are not permitted to spend long tours of duty there. They are also prohibited from fraternizing with locals. It's a hardship post, to say the least.

The need for such restrictions was fully apparent as a U.S. consulate vehicle was attacked by a suicide bomber on Monday, a brazen assault that killed two people and injured more than a dozen. Two Americans and two Pakistani employees of the consulate were among the injured, and a charred U.S. passport was found inside the vehicle.

The Peshawar consulate has at least 11 American staffers, according to State Department records, along with a number of local employees.

The deadly incident reminds us that U.S. diplomats, as well as envoys from Israel, France, Britain and other nations, often do their work under serious threat. They are in harm's way, and while the dangers they face are perhaps less obvious than those confronting military troops, diplomats are nevertheless identified, targeted, kidnapped and attacked. Likewise journalists, aid workers and civilian contractors. Post-traumatic stress syndrome can afflict them, too.

There were 79 recorded attacks of political violence against Americans worldwide last year, not counting military incidents and combat zones, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Two of the attacks were in Pakistan and seven came in Afghanistan. (The bureau reported 35 cases of indirect fire against the embassy in Baghdad.)

A consular vehicle was attacked in Peshawar in May 2011, killing one person and injuring a dozen, including two U.S. employees. Three months later, gunmen burst into a residence in Lahore and kidnapped an American consultant working there. Al Qaeda claimed to be holding the man. In April 2010, terrorists carried out what the State Department called "a complex attack" on the Peshawar consulate itself, with several Pakistani security and military personnel killed and wounded.

A travel and security alert was issued by the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan just a month ago, saying, "Threat reporting indicates these groups continue to seek opportunities to attack U.S. Mission personnel, U.S. citizens and other westerners especially at locations where they are known to congregate."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, traveling in Asia, assailed the attack on Monday as "cowardly."

The Pakistani government also quickly condemned the attack, and the ambassador to the United States, Sherry Rehman, expressed her regret in a tweet to the senior U.S. diplomat in Pakistan, the chargé d'affaires Richard E. Hoagland. (There is currently no U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.)

Renewed violence in the border and tribal areas has taken a particularly ugly turn this summer. Two children were recently beheaded in separate incidents: A boy, 12, was reportedly killed because his brother and uncle worked with the local police. The other child was a girl, 7, although a motive for her murder remains unknown.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and referred to informally as the T.T.P., released a video last week showing the severed heads of 12 men who likely were captured Pakistani soldiers. Armed Taliban fighters are seen standing over the lined-up heads, with one of the fighters wielding a large axe. (The gruesome video is here, posted on the Web site of The Long War Journal, which said it was sent to journalists by a Taliban spokesman. Warning: The graphic section begins at 3:50 of the video. A pixillated still photograph is here.)

In June, a Taliban ambush killed 12 soldiers, and seven were beheaded.

"We are not in a position where we can treat militancy as a law and order issue. Arrests and trials are not enough," said an editorial Tuesday in the Express Tribune newspaper in Karachi. "The ultimate goal must be to rout the TTP by taking the fight to them and ensuring that they have no area from which they can operate. This requires military, not police action."

Commenters on the Web site of the Dawn newspaper were particularly outraged over the beheadings of the soldiers.

"They disgrace God by praising him before such heinous acts and then chanting God is Greatest throughout the gory ordeal," said a commenter using the name PakPower.

"It is height of brutality and even Nazis of 2nd World War would have never committed such heineous brutality," said another, Akmal. "Taliban shame on you and the kind of philosophy u follow. Nation must get rid of these butchers."

Back to Peshawar: I was there a week after the September 11 attacks in 2001. I stood at the main border crossing and watched hundreds of heavily loaded, psychedelically painted "jingle trucks" groaning their way from the Pakistan side toward the fabled Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan.

"Is the road good?" I asked the Frontier Corps officer who was manning the border gate.

"Oh, no!" he said, looking alarmed at the naïveté of my question. "That way danger. Very danger."

Later that day, I was being lightly detained and casually questioned by two Pakistani officers, one in uniform, the other in civilian clothes, at a police station on the border. Over the usual cups of tea, I asked the officers if it was possible to venture into the tribal areas and buy, given enough money, an American Stinger missile left over from the Afghans' war against the Soviets.

A long and vigorous debate ensued. Plainclothes said it was impossible to purchase a Stinger. "All gone," he said.

But Uniform insisted he could find a missile in two days. "Easy," he said.

As I was leaving the police station, a kid approached me. He was selling cotton T-shirts and rayon socks, and he held up a shirt with Osama bin Laden's face on it. "Osama No. 1," he said.

I bought two of the shirts. I sent one to the Smithsonian for its archive (never heard back), and I now keep the other one in my car, using it for cleaning up after changing a tire or checking the oil.