AT a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Gilani on Friday, the security situation in the country was reviewed and it is believed that particular attention was paid to the emerging threat of militancy in south Punjab. The government believes that there is a ‘triangular syndicate’ of militancy at work in the country involving the TTP, Al Qaida and proscribed organisations such as the Jaish-i-Mohammad and Lashkar-i-Taiba and that with the current military operation under way in South Waziristan, the allies of the TTP in south Punjab have ramped up their attacks in the country. So, to try and stem the violence in the cities in the near term, the government wants a crackdown in south Punjab against the proscribed organisations and for this the intelligence and other operational requirements were reviewed on Friday.

Does this mean the state is finally getting serious about shutting down the jihadi pipeline in south Punjab? That isn’t clear yet. What the federal government appears to want is a rapid crackdown while the military operation in South Waziristan is under way. But such crackdowns have not proved a real turning point in the fight against militancy in the past. Moreover, while there is a consensus that the problem in south Punjab needs to be tackled by civilian security and law-enforcement agencies, there are several problems. Intelligence resources are already stretched thin given the threat of violence across Pakistan. The political will of the Punjab government, which controls the main law-enforcement agencies in the province, to crush militancy is not known. Then there is the elephant in the room, the Pakistan Army. Privately, army officials concede that there is a problem of militancy in south Punjab, but in the same breath the officials also talk of ‘Indian designs’ to conflate Al Qaida with the Lashkar-i-Taiba to try and bring more international pressure to bear on Pakistan. It is difficult to tell if the army is simply clinging to its prioritisation approach, whereby it first targets those groups attacking the state, or if there is institutional denial that the army’s old charges, the Kashmir-centric jihadis, have morphed into something far more dangerous.

South Punjab, which stretches downwards from Jhang to Bahawalpur and Rahimyar Khan, is a big area covering over a dozen districts. One of those districts, Dera Ghazi Khan, abuts Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP which in turn abuts South Waziristan. For those talking down the threat and claiming south Punjab is no Swat or South Waziristan, a question: in the not-too-distant past, was it conceivable that the Malakand division could fall to the militants as quickly as it did?