THE North Waziristan operation is now a month old. Everything we are made to believe tells us that the operation has been successful in hitting the physical centre of gravity of the insurgents and taking out scores of them. The effort is being presented as the grand finale in Pakistan’s fight against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan & Co.

If it is indeed so, the headline for me is no longer the day-to-day of the operation. Rather, it is the absence of the much-feared backlash in Pakistani metropolises that was the argument put forth by those within the military and beyond who opposed the operation over the past four years.

Why hasn’t it occurred? And what does this tell us about the operation and the state’s counterterrorism abilities?

Of course, it is premature to say that we have gotten past this phase without backlash. It may still come. But even if it does now, it is clear that the TTP has either forfeited or been unable to exercise the option of trying to raise the costs of the state to force it to rethink the utility of the operation itself.

Is it really a do-or-die fight for the TTP?

There can be two basic explanations for the relative calm. One, that the TTP has failed to hit back in a major way despite trying. If true, there are crucial lessons to be learnt in terms of the state’s counterterrorism capacity. What measures have the law enforcement and intelligence apparatus taken over the years to undercut the militants’ urban presence? Have their successes in neutralising terrorist sleeper cells and lines of communication been underappreciated? Does this make the constant sliming on the civilian counterterrorism apparatus unfair and the thought of calling out the military in preventive mode under Article 245 absurd?

The other explanation points to a need to question what we know about the operation. Is this really a do-or-die fight for the TTP? Or are they holding back deliberately?

The TTP and its affiliates know that they don’t have the capacity to prevent North Waziristan from being physically recaptured by the state. The destruction of their centre of gravity has to be taken as a foregone conclusion. But beyond that, if the TTP feel they can let the operation pass by melting away, it would be logical for them not to irk the state further by conducting an urban terror campaign when the state is prepared to unleash its wrath. Indeed, empirical evidence tells us that it is easiest for states to keep expanding the purview of their lethal actions at a time when state and society are mobilised on a war footing.

In this scenario, the TTP would choose to lose ground for now but prepare to raise their head once the active operation is over. If all the key insurgent leadership is already in Afghanistan or has melted away in Pakistani towns, we need to recalibrate the expectations from this operation. The TTP would likely begin to re-operate in pockets from Fata in the coming months. They could also make their Afghanistan-based ‘reverse strategic depth’ permanent and continue to prick the Pakistani state from there — without holding Pakistani territory.

Is this also why the Punjabi Taliban have not set Pakistan’s heartland on fire? Is it a conscious and joint decision by the TTP and Punjabi Taliban not to overplay their hand? Or have we exaggerated all along what the Punjab-based presence means for the TTP conglomerate? Their undoubted links notwithstanding, is the Punjabi Taliban’s silence evidence of their operational and ideological autonomy, indicating they are not willing to go down fighting for their Pakhtun counterparts even if the latter want them to?

Or is this a case of the state’s complicated game of differentiating between various militants at play? Is there a tacit quid pro quo between the state and the Punjab-based groups by virtue of which Punjab will be left untouched (in return for whatever the state may have offered)?

Finding out more about what is truly at play will reveal quite a bit about the severity of the challenge the state faces in Punjab, the state’s ability to influence these groups, and the ease (or not) with which the Pakhtun-Punjabi nexus of militants can be broken.

Finally, if the relative calm in cities holds, my fraternity must be called upon to introspect. What about the plethora of analyses that continued to plead that the operation would prove to be a death trap; that it was an American agenda? Have we not let this flawed narrative hold for four years to Pakistan’s own detriment? Also, was this narrative really a coincidence? Or was it fuelled to protect the state’s highly questionable self-defined geo-strategic interests?

The writer is a foreign policy expert based in Washington, DC. He is editor of Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies in South Asia: Through a Peacebuilding Lens.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2014