PAKISTAN'S unprecedented crackdown on its home-grown Taleban may have weakened the militants, but the insurgency is still a threat to the unpopular, United States-backed government.
The stakes are high and nuclear-armed Pakistan is being pulled in several directions. Washington wants the Pakistani military to hunt down Afghan Taleban groups crossing over the border to attack Nato troops in Afghanistan. But Pakistan is already st
retched against its own militants, who have a history of bouncing back and have started to carry out suicide bombings again after a relatively quiet period.
"It seems to me that this is a tactical retreat and the structure and the militant network still exists," said Khadim Hussain, a researcher with the private Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, based in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
"There is a relative lull in militant attacks, but there is a question mark about how long this lull will last."
The battle is draining Pakistan's economy, already battered by chronic power cuts and starved of foreign investment.
Pakistani officials are boasting of major successes, despite the fact militants have demonstrated they will attack all kinds of targets – from a volleyball game to the headquarters of the powerful military – to destabilise the state.
"We have shaken them, they are running helter-skelter. They are on the run," said Fiaz Toru, a top home ministry official in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which is home to most militants.
Granted, Taleban bases were destroyed in a major offensive in South Waziristan on the Afghan border and the military said it had cleared insurgents out of Bajaur, another Taleban sanctuary.
But officials acknowledge the Taleban often melt away during offensives, sometimes returning to areas taken over by the state.
They fled the assault in South Waziristan, for instance, and regrouped in other ethnic Pashtun tribal areas, such as North Waziristan.
It's a familiar pattern.
The army launched an offensive a year ago to clear Taleban fighters out of Swat Valley, from where the militants had pushed out towards Islamabad.
Luckily for Pakistan's military, the public started backing the state in the battle. This was because they were angered by the Taleban's austere version of Islamic rule involving public executions and whippings for those deemed immoral.
But the Swat crackdown also raised concerns that militants would simply flee to Mansehra district, just to the east.
Suspected Islamist militants stormed the office of a US-based, Christian aid agency near Mansehra on Wednesday, killing six Pakistani aid workers after singling them out and then bombing the building.
Deep down, Pakistani officials may not be as confident as their boasts suggest, even in Peshawar, a key city on the road to Afghanistan where security has been tightened and security checkpoints abound.
"We have made Peshawar comparatively peaceful, but our main concern is now that they may be running sleeper cells in southern and eastern districts of the province," said a senior security official involved in the anti-Taleban crackdown.
More than 700 civilians were killed in attacks in NWFP in 2009, most of them in its capital Peshawar, eroding confidence in the country's security forces. Yesterday, a roadside bomb killed another four people in the city.
A new push by the Taleban, which staged a suicide bombing that killed 13 people at a police intelligence office in eastern Lahore city on Wednesday, would renew pressure on weak president Asif Ali Zardari, who can't afford new political crises.
Such a push may not be possible for now. It is widely believed that Pakistan Taleban leader Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a US drone aircraft missile strike in January, a big blow to the Taleban.
Nevertheless, analysts say the Taleban are capable of producing one leader after another. Mehsud's predecessor was also killed in a drone attack.
Despite ongoing security challenges, Washington expects Pakistan also to go after Afghan Taleban groups who cross the border to attack Nato forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan has arrested the Afghan Taleban number two, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, earning praise from the Americans. But an all-out siege against all Afghan militant groups would open new fronts and probably cost more Pakistani lives.
Hundreds of police and army troops have died in the fight against the Pakistani Taleban in the past year.
"We can't afford to do things in a hurry," said a senior security official. "We have to move at our own pace. While we are consolidating our gains in South Waziristan and Swat, we can't afford to go to North Waziristan right away."
