The commanding officer of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, Adm. William J. Fallon, was in turn pessimistic and optimistic as he looked back on eight months of operating in a turbulent region that runs from Egypt in the west to Pakistan in the east, from Kazakhstan in the north to Kenya in the south.

Most visible is the tier of troubles comprising the war in Iraq, the anti-American government in Iran that is thought to be seeking nuclear weapons, and the turmoil in nuclear-armed Pakistan. Fallon was quick to point to other troubles, including what he called "dysfunctional governments" in Sudan, where some observers say genocide is occurring, and Eritrea and Somalia, which are rife with disorder. (They, along with Kenya, will be moved to the new Africa Command after it is set up in September 2008.)

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are calm but stagnant. The gulf states of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, however, are doing well with their oil revenues and new efforts to attract tourists to luxurious resorts. Afghanistan, despite a running battle with the Taliban terrorists, is showing signs of hope, at least where some provincial governors have managed to establish control.

Perhaps most surprising are the five nations of Central Asia, despite a stifling overhang of Communist politicians and bureaucrats left from the days when those nations were part of the Soviet Union. Fallon said: "They are showing a lot of promise as they try to be independent of Russia and China." Russia lies north of Central Asia, China to the east.

The admiral was interviewed during a quick stop in Hawai'i, where he had earlier been in charge of the Pacific Command, on his way back to his headquarters in Tampa, Fla. He had just been in Singapore, where the government there had awarded him the Meritorious Service Medal for his achievements while serving as Pacific commander.

When Fallon left here to take over the Central Command, CENTCOM in U.S. military parlance, he said he planned to urge other Middle Eastern nations to support the government in Iraq. "There are a lot of people just standing around doing nothing," he said then.

Today, he asserted, "The atmosphere has gotten better. They have stopped pinging on al-Maliki," referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who had been the target of Arab criticism. "He has stopped looking over his shoulder to see who was after him."

On Iran, Fallon brushed off speculation that the U.S. was planning to attack it to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He added, however: "The Iranians must not underestimate our resolve. The primary objective is to get them to alter their behavior to play a constructive role in the region."

Like other senior American military officers, Fallon was anxious about the chaos in Pakistan as the U.S. had counted on the Pakistanis to help run down al-Qaida terrorists hiding along the border with Afghanistan. Fallon said he hoped President Pervez Musharraf, with whom he had recently talked, and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, could resolve their differences in a power sharing arrangement.

The admiral, while not downplaying the tribal tendencies that hinder the formation of a working central government in Afghanistan, said that provinces with strong governors had been able to cut the production of poppies from which morphine and opium is extracted.

Afghanistan had been a leading producer of illicit opium until the Taliban came to power about 10 years ago and imposed strict Muslim laws on the country. Among them was a prohibition on raising or using illicit drugs. With their defeat by the U.S. and allies in northern Afghanistan in 2001, farmers began growing poppies again.

North of Afghanistan, in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, Fallon said he had found leaders "looking for help from us." They have oil and natural gas but need to develop roads, electrical power, ways to manage water and agricultural production to work their way out of poverty.

Fallon, who often dealt with Chinese military and political leaders when he commanded U.S. forces in Asia and the Pacific, said the Chinese had accused the U.S. of seeking to encircle China by forging ties with the nations of Central Asia and occupying bases there. He asserted that the bases were those of the Central Asian nations that the U.S. sought to use only to support operations in Afghanistan.

Richard Halloran is a Honolulu-based journalist and former New York Times correspondent in Asia. His column appears weekly in Sunday's Focus section.