Evicting the militants from Lower Dir and Buner is not enough; Swat is the epicentre of militancy in the Malakand Division and the militants there, led by Maulana Fazlullah, have shown scant interest in abiding by the peace deal that was brokered by Sufi Mohammad of the TNSM. More generally, the militants in Swat themselves feed off the networks of militancy in Fata and Punjab and there can be no lasting peace anywhere until a credible national anti-militancy strategy is developed.

For that, there are certain developments on the political and military fronts that must first occur. Politically, the Pakistan Army has made it clear that it wants the politicians to develop a consensus on using the military option. In the case of Lower Dir and Buner, it is perhaps for the first time that consensus has been present and the army has duly acted.

What made the political consensus possible were two factors: one, Sufi Mohammad’s rant against the entire existing political set-up in Pakistan; and, two, the attempt by Swat militants to grab more territory after the promulgation of the new Nizam-i-Adl regulation, which was the militants’ only self-professed goal. But the stomach for a prolonged military confrontation does not appear to exist, and the politicians may yet thwart an expansion of the military operation into Swat and elsewhere.

Second, the security establishment needs to once and for all rid itself of the notion that there is a role for non-state actors in our national security policy. Perhaps more than anything else feeding the national confusion on the militancy problem is the continuing belief that not all militants are bad, that some are ‘controllable’ and that some are simply uninterested in ever turning their guns on the Pakistan state. But reality suggests otherwise: ideology, the survival instinct and sometimes purely tactical considerations have created interconnections between the various militant groups to the point where it makes little strategic sense to try and defeat one set without acting against the others.

Note that the threat to the media in Swat is all-encompassing: don’t oppose the ‘Taliban’ and their ‘positive’ impact on ‘society’. The message: we are one, we are coming and don’t stand in our way. Would that the state demonstrated the same resolve and unanimity.