Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mahsud.After three inconclusive military operations against him since 2004-2005 and two peace accords, the political and military leadership in Pakistan has pledged that the new offensive would be sustained and decisive. Already, the Mahsud tribal territory is being bombed and shelled by jet-fighters, gunship helicopters and artillery guns and ground forces are battling to clear the militants from the main Jandola-Wana road in South Waziristan. The government has also stepped up efforts to weaken Baitullah Mahsud's Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) by triggering defections from his ranks and strengthening a rival group of Mahsud tribesmen led by Qari Zainuddin, who was assassinated on June 23 and was replaced by his brother Misbahuddin. As expected, the TTP claimed responsibility for the assassination and threatened all Taliban dissidents with the same fate.

A third element of the military strategy to defeat Baitullah Mahsud is greater cooperation with the U.S. by sharing intelligence and identifying targets for U.S. drones in Waziristan. This became evident when CIA-operated drones carried out two missile strikes on June 24 in Baitullah Mahsud-controlled area in South Waziristan. The missiles, however, managed to kill Taliban foot-soldiers and a few low-level commanders only. Among around 70 people who perished in this attack, the majority were civilians attending a funeral, which too wasn't spared by the Americans.

The latest military campaign began on April 25 in the Lower Dir district when President Asif Ali Zardari was visiting the U.S. He was still there when the army opened a new front in the neighbouring Buner district. And the president, lacking credibility and suffering from low approval ratings as recent public opinion surveys in Pakistan showed, was still abroad in Europe when the troops entered Swat district on May 8 to flush out the Taliban militants.

It was, therefore, hardly surprising that the president was criticised for being away from the country when troops were fighting and dying in the Malakand region and hundreds of thousands of people were getting displaced. His presence in Washington at the time of the military action gave his critics the chance to argue that the army operations in Malakand region were launched on the instructions of the U.S. Such an impression is already strong in Pakistan and it could drain support for the military action now underway against the militants.

There is now little doubt that the May 27 suicide bombing targeting the two adjacent premises used by the police and the Pakistan Army's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in downtown Lahore was carried out by the TTP. And not only that, there is a general belief that the same organisation or its like-minded groups are involved in the subsequent four bomb explosions that hit Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan, two major cities in the NWFP, on May 28 and killed 10 people including four policemen and caused injuries to many more.

Hakimullah Mahsud, a 27 year old tribesman from South Waziristan and a close aide to Baitullah Mahsud, claimed responsibility for the Lahore bombing and threatened more such attacks in Islamabad and in major Punjab cities including Rawalpindi and Multan.

According to him, the Lahore bombing was retaliation for the military operation in Swat. Baitullah Mahsud and the TTP have reacted violently whenever his hideouts in his native South Waziristan or those of his allies elsewhere in the NWFP are attacked. The beleaguered Taliban in Swat too had been urging him to act by sending his suicide bombers to attack military targets in Punjab.

It is now obvious that the two sides have declared an open war against each other. The military operations in Swat, Buner and Lower Dir districts that form part of Malakand division are in full swing and occasionally the armed forces have also bombed militants' positions in the neighbouring Upper Dir, Shangla and Malakand Agency. The army has also been carrying out attacks against the TTP-linked Taliban militants in South Waziristan, Orakzai, Mohmand, Bajaur, Kurram and Khyber tribal regions. In fact, the scope of military operations has spread to new areas and has, in its wake, displaced around three million people, including 2.4 million freshly uprooted from Swat and rest of Malakand division.

The military operations are now nine weeks old but a decisive victory against the militants hasn't been achieved. The top Taliban commanders from Swat have survived the military onslaught and the ANP-led provincial government in the NWFP has been forced to announce cash rewards for the capture, whether alive or dead, of 21 top ranking militants including Maulana Fazlullah.

The internally displaced persons (IDPs) have become a major humanitarian crisis and delay in clearing the troubled areas of the militants and ensuring repatriation of the uprooted families to their native towns and villages could result in serious political, economic and social problems. Only about 200,000 IDPs, or 20 per cent of the total, are living in the designated relief camps while the remaining 80 per cent are staying outside these camps with relatives, friends and even with strangers. The Mardan and Swabi districts have taken most of the IDPs and every village there has been a camp for the displaced people. Families have provided spare rooms, houses and their hujras, or male guesthouses, to the IDPs and are sharing food and other necessities of life with the displaced people. Their generosity is in keeping with the Pashtun tradition of hospitality, but it is being increasingly asked as to how long the host families would be able to accommodate the IDPs.

To add to the worries of the Pakistan government, the international response to the UN call for assistance for the IDPs hasn't been encouraging. On May 22, the UN made an appeal for $543 million assistance for 1.5 million IDPs to help them for the next six months until December 2009. The UN officials in Islamabad said they were concerned that only $189 million had been pledged until now and that it constituted only 39 per cent of the need. They were hoping that the remaining assistance required for feeding and sheltering the displaced people would be provided by the end of June so that assistance could be streamlined for the IDPs. It is relevant to add that the UN appeal for assistance is for 1.5 million people while the number of IDPs has now reached three million. And more people are getting displaced as new military operations are also driving families out of their homes and villages in South Waziristan, Orakzai and Kurram tribal areas. The government, it needs mentioning, wasn't prepared for the consequences of the military campaign as it was expecting that the IDPs would not exceed half a million. And it couldn't even make prompt preparations to accommodate the 500,000 or so that according to its calculation were going to be displaced.

Though the Lahore bombing specifically targeted the ISI and the police, the subsequent bombings in Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan mostly killed and wounded civilians. Past attacks by the TTP militants on government installations and security forces have also harmed civilians, but it appears that the Pakistani Taliban is no longer concerned about adverse public opinion and is willing to carry out bombings in crowded public places and bazaars. The two consecutive bombings in Peshawar's historic Qissa Khwani bazaar (Bazaar of the Story Tellers) on May 28 killed seven civilians, including shopkeepers, as no police post or security forces establishment was located in the area. It is clear that the security forces remain the preferable target for the Taliban militants as they seek revenge for the military action being carried out against them in Swat, Waziristan and other tribal and semi-tribal areas. However, they are no longer hesitating to hit public places and other soft targets to terrorise the population. It seems they are aware that public opinion has turned against them and it is no use trying to win the sympathies of the people.

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