The spreading war in Pakistan and Afghanistan is driving journalists into exile and threatening those countries' very frail democracies. The Committee to Protect Journalists' Asia program is being hit with an increasing number of emergency cases as the security situation deteriorates. An alarming number of journalists are contemplating leaving their country because of death threats, and several have already fled.

Imtiaz Ali, a talented young stringer for The Washington Post, works out of Peshawar, the main city near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He is in New Haven, Conn., watching his term draw to an end as a Yale World Fellow, and facing hard decisions about returning home. His name, along with three others, was mentioned earlier this year in a small Taliban publication identifying him as an American spy for the reporting he did from the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier. With a visa extension running out, he spent his New Years' Eve trying to decide how he can return home with his wife and children. A colleague of his, now in Europe after being shot several times in what was either an assassination attempt or a bungled kidnapping in November, told him to "think not once, not twice, but a hundred times," before returning to his home near Peshawar. Another told him that it would be unwise to return right now — even the capital Islamabad has become too risky.

I am in touch with five other journalists in Pakistan and Afghanistan who are contemplating fleeing. With several more under threat, I'm worried that we'll soon be seeing more. I think the talk of Pakistan and Afghanistan becoming failed states is premature, and most likely unwarranted. But even with governments intact, conditions for journalists can grow unbearably dangerous in a region that is rapidly becoming the world's next theater of war. At times the threats in Pakistan come from religious militants, but many see the hand of the shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate involved. The inability of the Afghan authorities to offer much security is an indicator of just how frail the Hamid Karzai government is.

Most of the people Committee to Protect Journalists helps are newspaper or TV beat reporters or local radio announcers who don't have great financial resources — journalists are not well paid in most of the countries we deal with. Very often they find themselves without the support of their news organizations when they have to stop work. Some of the people I'm writing about asked not to have the specifics of their cases mentioned. Some fear for their own safety, some fear retribution on their families, even though they themselves have fled into exile.

Journalists Najam Sethi and Jugnu Mohsin were also named in that Taliban article that threatened Imtiaz, as was the well-known writer and commentator Ahmed Rashid. Najam and Jugnu (they won CPJ's International Press Freedom Award in 1999) run the Urdu-language daily Aaj Kal and the English-language Daily Times from Lahore. Prominent journalists with international recognition, they received security assistance from both the Musharraf and Zardari governments when they came under earlier threat from the militants who had held out against a government siege at Islamabad's Red Mosque last year.

Najam and Jugnu used the strategy of publicizing their situation and using their international connections, but "the threat to us is still palpable and we are unable to move freely," Jugnu wrote to me when I asked her for an update. It's a courageous stance, because they, as the others, were coldly threatened at the end of the Taliban's article: "The Mujahideen have already killed many such cunning and senseless spies like you. One day, the Holy Warriors will execute you with the same punishment."

But for most of these reporters there's no use going to the authorities. Pakistan is on CPJ's list of the top 10 press freedom backsliders because of the high number of unpunished attacks against journalists. Afghanistan is no better, if not worse.

From my vantage point I see hopes for a free press in these countries fading quickly. I'm starting to see more fleeing journalists, when we should be making every effort to protect them and keep them on the job.

Bob Dietz is the Committee to Protect Journalists' Asia program coordinator. Reach him at CPJ, 330 Seventh Avenue, 11th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10001 or visit www.cpj.org.