Pakistan has seen a spate of suicide attacks this year and a significant rise ever since Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf aligned with the United States in the war on terrorism.

Many of the attacks have occurred in the region surrounding Peshawar near the Afghan border, but recent intelligence reports from U.S. and Pakistani sources reflect the significant trend of "Talibanization" throughout the country.

And any development illustrating this trend underscores the open question of whether the Musharraf government is up to the task of combating threats from various militant groups within its borders.

The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan last week issued a warning, saying, "The U.S. Mission has received non-specific information regarding terrorist attacks, possibly suicide attacks, against U.S. persons and interests, as well as places frequented by Westerners."

The Warden Message, which relays security information minus the classified details to U.S. citizens living overseas, said specifically that major cities may be targeted, including Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar.

A report published on the same day by the Pakistan newspaper Daily Times said that "intelligence agencies" are aware of new threats from Waziristan-based jihadist groups. "Some terrorists had already entered Punjab from Waziristan to launch suicide attacks" and may target police offices and training centers, the report stated.

Whether these reports herald a significant tactical change for either the Pakistani government or the United States is difficult to determine without the details of the classified intelligence assessments, experts said.

But whether or not the precise details of these reports prove true, they do spur the question of what the Musharraf government will do to mitigate the growing threat and the seemingly inevitable prospect that U.S. interests become targets. Depending on Musharraf's reaction, how would the United States respond?

At this point in the war on terrorism, "The White House doesn't see any other way than to have good relations with Pakistan," said Husain Haqqani, director of the international relations department at Boston University.

"But if, God forbid, there was a major attack on American interests or citizens in Pakistan, it would certainly result in more questions being asked about Pakistan in Washington that haven't been asked so far," Haqqani said.

Pakistan has historically been the training ground for radical groups who target other countries in the region, so the more recent trend of targeting Pakistani interests and even government officials indicates that the Musharraf government "is actually doing the right thing" and fighting the radical groups, said Daniel Markey, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"It's partially a good news story," Markey said. "The bad news is that these are groups that have the capacity to inflict a fair amount of pain on the rest of Pakistan if they chose to do so."

While the impetus behind the trend may be that the militants no longer see the government as an ally, feeble attempts by Musharraf to put down the uprising suggest that militants also will not see the government as much of a deterrent.

Markey said the most significant sign recently of the "creeping Talibanization of Pakistan" was the anti-vice movement waged by the Jamia Hafsa madrassa, one of the seminaries of the Red Mosque in Islamabad that is said to have links to al-Qaida.

Students of the Islamic school launched a campaign in January to protest the demolition of several mosques built on city property. Armed with bamboo canes and veiled in black, the female students of Jamia Hafsa occupied a government-run children's library located near the madrassa. In late March, the students raided a house they said was operating as a brothel, kidnapping three women they accused of violating the laws of Pakistan and Islam.

The students and clerics of Jamia Hafsa and the Red Mosque justify their actions by saying that they are enforcing the laws that the Pakistani authorities allow to be violated.

Indeed, the reaction of the Pakistani authorities even to Jamia Hafsa's violent protests has been muted. The government has agreed to some of the group's demands by beginning to rebuild some of the mosques.

Markey said he was "reluctant to go out on a limb and say (the government) capitulated to this group. But there's a good chance they will try to reach a negotiated settlement rather than crushing them."

He also noted the significance of a radical group like Jamia Hafsa gaining a foothold in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital city.

Radicalism can plague a city like Islamabad just as easily as London, Markey said, because of the "globalized connection" to amorphous organizations like al-Qaida. But the difference and the concern with Pakistan is that there seems to be neither the will nor the ability to firmly halt these groups.

Markey said he questioned what the government's reaction to Jamia Hafsa might mean about the state's capacity "to protect more progressive, liberal, cosmopolitan citizens from those who want to bring Pakistan into a world that looks more like a Taliban (state)."

Haqqani was less concerned about the state's capacity to stem the threat of radicalism. He said that Musharraf has certainly been effective in his efforts to thwart opposition, although even that ability seemed to unravel in the uproar surrounding the dismissal of the country's chief justice recently.

Haqqani said that the problem was rooted in the unwillingness to crush the threat. "Musharraf's strategy has been to calibrate terrorism, not eliminate it," he said.

"As long as there is a terrorist threat, Musharraf remains globally important and he continues getting international support and attention. If he eliminates it, then his raison d'etre disappears," Haqqani said.

This justification is bound to go a long way yet as even mediocre U.S. allies in the region are few, far between and dwindling.

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