In the past, whenever a senior visitor came from Washington, the Pakistani military raided a suspected terrorist hideout, killing a sizeable number of militants. It happened with such regularity that most people in Pakistan saw such actions as an attempt by the government to please the Americans.

The government launched an operation this week as well, resulting in the deaths of scores of militants and dozens of soldiers in Waziristan, a semi-autonomous tribal territory where the Taliban and al-Qaida extremists have established several strongholds.

But this time something else happened, too. While Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher were discussing a strategic partnership with officials in Islamabad, the militants attacked the Pakistani military.

The suicide attack on an elite commando unit near Islamabad not only killed 16 soldiers, it also took the initiative away from the government, showing the militants are now strong enough to strike any target they want.

The message they sent was simple: The militants will no longer wait for the military to attack them whenever a U.S. official visits Islamabad. They will now attack the military to make the Americans realize they are a force to be reckoned with.

And it was not a random attack; the unit the militants targeted was the same that led a military invasion of the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad in July. At the time, 15 soldiers and hundreds of students from a seminary attached to the mosque were killed in the fighting that lasted for several days.

Ultimately, the military razed the seminary, killing all the militants hiding there as well as a large number students not directly involved with the militants.

Soon after the raid, militants across Pakistan vowed to avenge their colleagues, and since then several suicide bombs have been traced to the sympathizers of the Red Mosque.

But the Sept. 13 attack was different from all previous ones. It appeared to be well-planned and settled a score with the commandos at the Tarbela base near Islamabad.

A spokesman for the Pakistani military, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, denies the claim the targeted unit was involved in the Red Mosque operation, but independent sources insist that it was.

And it was not the first targeted attack the militants carried out. On Sept. 4, militants targeted a bus carrying the staff of the Pakistan's elite spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. They also conducted another attack in the same vicinity.

Both blasts occurred near the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to Islamabad. As many as 29 people, including several ISI staffers, were killed in the two attacks.

Such attacks are seen in Pakistan as a declaration of war by the militants against the Pakistani military.

So far, Pakistani militants treated the military with respect. Many of them were trained by the military, first to fight Russians in Afghanistan and then to engage Indians in Kashmir.

Soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when Pakistan joined the U.S.-led war against the terrorism, the Taliban and al-Qaida started targeting the Pakistani military. But most of these attacks were by foreigners -- Arabs, Afghans, Uzbeks and Chechens -- who had little sympathy for Pakistan or its military.

Pakistani militants avoided targeting the military, but the raid on the Red Mosque ended that respect.

Now the militants see the military as an enemy, "which takes orders from America," as the Red Mosque cleric Ghazi Abdur Rashid, who was killed in the raid, declared hours before his death.

The Pakistani media reported that soon after the Red Mosque invasion several radical clerics issued a fatwa declaring it's now legitimate to kill Pakistani soldiers because they are obeying the orders of a non-Muslim superpower. Recent attacks on the military show the militants are obeying that fatwa.

This indicates a turning point in Pakistan's war against terrorism. It is no more a war the Pakistanis are fighting for the Americans, as many in Pakistan still believe.

It is a direct war between the military and the militants. And it is not just a war: It is also a battle for hearts and minds. Who wins the war will depend on who succeeds in winning the sympathies of the Pakistani people and ordinary soldiers.

Reports from the tribal regions, where more than 100,000 Pakistani troops are fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida, show that in some cases soldiers have surrendered to militants without much fight.

Almost all such soldiers, however, were from the paramilitary Frontier Corps, which recruits its soldiers from the same tribes it is now fighting. So far there have been no desertions of regular troops. But this does not mean soldiers are convinced they are fighting a just war.

Media reports show at least some soldiers also see this as President Pervez Musharraf's personal war or America's war, as the militants claim. The war is even more unpopular among the masses. Ordinary Pakistanis feel that Musharraf committed a blunder by sending troops to the tribal region to please the Americans.

They argue that the British fought these tribes for almost 100 years and failed to subdue them. The Russians met the same fate when they attempted to subdue the Pashtun tribes during the occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

Many Pakistanis say the Americans will leave the region in the next few years, if not earlier, leaving Islamabad alone to deal with the angry tribesmen. They argue that once the Americans leave, it will turn into a civil war that can destroy Pakistan.

What the Pakistani government needs to do is to convince the Pakistanis it can handle the situation, with or without U.S. support.

The Americans also need to assure the Pakistanis they are there for the long haul.

If the Pakistani government and its American allies fail to address the fears of ordinary Pakistanis, Musharraf will first lose the battle for hearts and minds and then the war on terrorism.

And if this happens, it will bring disaster to the entire region.

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