The United States is paying increasing attention to Pakistan in its bid to bring stability to Afghanistan, amid fears that the nuclear state could collapse. Rival Islamic militant groups are joining forces to make their country into a stronghold - and are receiving support from Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency.

Last Thursday, at 7 a.m., Baitullah Mehsud dialed the telephone number of Alamgir Bhittani, a radio correspondent in the Tank region of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. The voice of "Bait," as the Pashtuns call the feared leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was soft and flattering.

He had called the journalist to boast about his exploits, telling him that his fighters were the ones who had created a bloodbath the previous day at a police academy near the northeastern Pakistani city of Lahore. He told Bhittani that he had ordered his men to "eliminate" as many supporters of what he called the traitorous Pakistani regime as possible.

Wearing stolen uniforms, the group of 10 terrorists had gained access to the training camp to kill recruits. The attackers took hostages and hid in one of the buildings. Helicopters and elite army and police units appeared on the scene. In the end, three of the terrorists blew themselves up, and the rest were arrested. When the bloodbath was over, eight police recruits were lying dead in the barrack's yard.

The attack, Mehsud said, was in retaliation for President Asif Ali Zardari allowing the Americans to pursue him and his allies in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I am not afraid of death," Mehsud boasted, before adding a threat. Soon, he said, the Americans would also be made to suffer. "We will take the battle to Washington with an attack that will astound the whole world."

Washington takes this threat seriously. Since his election in November, U.S. President Barack Obama has been urging his allies to stop treating the drama of the Afghanistan war as an isolated problem but, rather, as a regional conflict that also has to be conducted in Pakistan.