We are fighting a war in the north of the country. And the nation is so busy arguing over whether we should fight it at all that no one seems to pay attention to an equally critical question what sort of a war is this?

To begin with, this is not a conventional war that involves armies and states facing off, looking to capture territory and aiming to defeat the enemy. In such a war, the rules of engagement are clear and the civilians distinguishable from the combatants.

The conflict in northern Pakistan is also not a conventional insurgency, as many assume. Most well-known conventional insurgencies — such as those led by the likes of Mao Zedong, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh — focused as much on winning `hearts and minds` as on engaging and defeating the enemy. In Mao`s words, an insurgency will succeed only if the insurgents can move through society as fish through water.

This is not necessarily the relationship the Taliban enjoy with the people of the tribal areas and the North-West Frontier Province. In many cases, the militants have gained control through terrorising local people, not by winning them over. People have been flogged and beheaded in public, ostensibly to curb crime but also as part of a `shock and awe` campaign.

What the Taliban are doing is not unique, though this has been so in many conflicts around the world in the second half of the 20th century. For one, the conflict in the Balkans involved similar tactics as did the wars between Hutus and Tutsis in Central Africa and the guerrilla war in Columbia. All these conflicts have so many new but common features that some social scientists have labelled them `new wars` to distinguish them from old-fashioned ones.

The militants` relationship with people is not the only distinguishing feature of these new conflicts. A second distinctive characteristic is that the warring parties — or at least one of them — define their identity in terms different from those that the state uses to define it. Many, for instance, see the conflict in the tribal areas as involving Pakhtuns on both sides of the Durand Line. Many in the Awami National Party, for instance, believe that the Pakhtuns living both in Pakistan and Afghanistan are the victims in this conflict and they are suffering at the hands of all warring parties — the Pakistani military, the Taliban and the allied forces in Afghanistan. This is certainly not how the state in Pakistan or Afghanistan, or even the United States, sees the trouble in the tribal areas.

A third distinguishing characteristic is a relatively lesser focus on the economics of such conflicts. Sub-state fighters in these conflicts finance themselves not just through external assistance but also through crime. Robberies, kidnappings for ransom and drug trafficking have become common, and the militants extort protection money from ordinary citizens and legal businesses. Observers of the conflict in the tribal region will be able to testify that this is the situation in the region today.

The tribal areas, by virtue of their legal and economic isolation from the state, have always served as a hub of drug trafficking and arms smuggling besides acting as markets for stolen items and fields of operations for the timber mafia. All this affords a lucrative source of revenue for the militants operating in these areas. The Taliban either protect all these illegal businesses for a fee or they have joined hands with those running them. Even in this they are behaving like their Columbian counterparts who support themselves through the drugs trade. Another parallel can be drawn with the Bosnian Croats who, during the conflict in the Balkans, charged `customs duties` for allowing humanitarian aid to pass through.

A necessary outcome of crime and conflict getting mixed up is that the militants and illegal businesses become interdependent. The fighters cannot sustain their war effort without the money they `earn` from the illegal and informal economy in their area while illegal businesses flourish and thrive, secure in the knowledge that the state`s laws and regulations will never catch up with them because of the conflict. The climate of insecurity works to the advantage of both peace does not suit either of them.

The need to highlight the distinguishing characteristics of these conflicts arises from the fact that there are no quick-fix solutions. The use of indiscriminate military force is certainly not one this is perhaps the most important lesson that those fighting old-fashioned insurgencies (remember the Americans in Vietnam) have learnt the hard way. Those fighting the so-called new wars would do well to keep this in mind.

Another equally important lesson from these out-of-style insurgencies is that a dialogue has to take place between the warring parties at some stage. Some `terrorists` or `mass murderers` will have to be spoken to. London did it with the Irish Republican Army and Tel Aviv did it with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Yasser Arafat. To expect that Islamabad can be an exception to this rule is only unrealistic. If it has to happen anyway one may as well be prepared for it.

But while the use of force and dialogue has to go hand in hand, there can be no discounting the need for curbing the militants` sources of revenue. In order to choke this essential supply of financial oxygen to the militants, the state needs to deal strictly with the informal and mostly illegal economy in the tribal areas. If the state had already extended its reach to these areas — along with its accompanying systems and infrastructure such as laws, enforcement agencies, and education and employment opportunities — the illegal business activity would not have been there as a ready source of money for the militants. In other words, militias would have also found it much more difficult to find willing recruits to their cause if unemployment in the tribal areas was not as high as it is now.

Enforcing the writ of the state and creating and giving jobs are, however, only one part of the solution. The rest comes from assuring local people that peace will provide them the economic dividends that the conflict has robbed them of. If they are made to believe this, they can also be expected to organise local resistance to the militias on their own.

More than anything else, Islamabad requires a commitment that is long term and development efforts that are not seen as aid or compensation. Apparently it was aware of this when the military first went into the tribal areas in 2003 it went in promising to construct roads, schools and other infrastructure and the Americans promised to provide financial help for all that. But soon the focus shifted from building schools and hospitals to using violence and dropping bombs.

Five years later, it is still not too late. To return to Mao`s remarks, if we have not been able to kill the fish, perhaps it is time to drain the water in which it swims.