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PESHAWAR A voice crackled over the wireless last week. 'How are you?' the caller asked. 'Is everything alright?' It caught immediate attention.
For several days officers of the military's signal corps have been straining their ears to track the voice that once dominated the airwaves in Swat. The voice was familiar and distinctive.
'It was unquestionably that of Maulana Fazlullah,' a military officer said. The intercept on May 27 was the last that the military heard from the Taliban chief in Swat.
Since May 8 when the military launched Operation Rah-i-Rast, the militant leader has been careful not to come on the radio to avoid detection.
As part of its strategy, the military has shut down all cellular and landline communications in Swat to force the militants to come and speak out on hand-held waltie-talkie.
And the intercepts, the military says, offer a glimpse into the dwindling fortune of the man, from being in total control of the scenic valley to somebody trying to shore up the sagging morale of his fighters.
The Taliban leader went ahead with his message for his fighters when his call did not elicit any response from the other side.
'Don't lose morale,' Fazlullah said. 'Go into the trees and take the sniper rifles with you. Take aim and fire. You should be able to kill at least one or two.'
The exchange was part of a series of conversation among militants in Swat that the military has recorded since the beginning of its offensive.
But the intercept has offered few clues, if any, to the whereabouts of the wanted militant leadership in Swat.
Security and military officials believe that MFU — the acronym for Maulana Fazlullah — and his council are no longer in their hideout of Peochar in the upper reaches of Swat after three battalions of the Special Services Group parachuted into the thickly forested 8,000 to 10,000 feet high mountain range.
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Swat, spokesman Muslim Khan is believed to have moved into adjoining Lower Dir from where he is able to call media outlets through his cellphone. A strike on his suspected hideout last week missed the target.
There is disagreement within the security establishment over possible hideouts of MFU and his close lieutenants, including Shah Dauran.
Some officials insist that the Swat TTP leadership is either hiding in the valley or somewhere along its boundary with Lower Dir and Buner.
'My gut feeling is that they are still there, trying to get out,' a military officer said.
But another officer said the Swat leadership might already have sneaked out and reached South Waziristan.
'It is hard to detect the actual location of the transmission,' the official said. The militants, he said, had devised a system to relay messages through a network of phones and wireless communication to avoid detection.
The government last week announced a reward for information leading to Fazlullah's arrest.
Miffed that the provincial government offered a measly Rs5 million reward for MFU, the federal government on the military's prodding increased it to Rs50 million, indicating the significance the government attaches to his capture.
Government officials acknowledge that taking out or capturing the TTP leadership in Swat is important on two counts — it will restore public confidence and credibility and, more importantly, prevent Swat from relapsing into militancy.
'We know how important it is to kill or capture the leadership,' the officer acknowledged.
But failure of the security apparatus to kill or capture the TTP leadership in Swat also highlights the serious handicap and lack of capability it faces in tracking them down.
'We need tools to do it (the operation) more quickly and more efficiently and make it less bloody. We need technical intelligence tools. Without this, we can still do it ourselves, but it is going to be long and bloodier,' the official said.
Without technical and electronic intelligence tools, said one security official, it was like finding a needle in a haystack. 'It's hard and painstaking,' he remarked.
The intercepts make it abundantly clear. They give out few clues. Adept at keeping cover, the militants have adopted noms de guerre.
Even the names of the areas they operate in have been changed to those that existed in the days of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) or the Arabian battles to confuse the military ear.
'The deviants (a name given to the military by the militants) have discovered our frequencies. You need to keep changing the frequency. Use the special frequency if you have anything important to say,' a militant commander was heard saying in one of the intercepts.
The battle, however, continues not just on the field but also on the airwaves.
Shah Dauran, the fiery cleric known for spitting venom against the government and security forces on his FM radio, is out of service, but small-time clerics keep popping up on low-band frequency to preach Jihad, only to get jammed minutes later.
A successful air blitz knocked out the militants' communication network. That, the official said, had had an impact on the militants' morale. 'They are in disarray,' the official said.
'The guests who had come to us for Jihad have escaped,' lamented a caller in one of the intercepts. 'Tell all your comrades to set up checkpoints and arrest them.'
In one surprising piece of chatter in recent weeks, a voice passes down an order that appeared calculated to confuse the military 'Abu Ameer (a reference to MFU) has given the order that Mingora should henceforth be referred to as Buner.'
Significantly, as the Taliban lose control over the valley, the local population also seems to have switched sides.
A man who called himself Jawad fumed on May 27 that villagers were raising white flags on their houses. 'Why are these gutless people holding white flags?' he said.
Another man responded 'Everyone has his own will. How can we stop them?'
'In the public meeting by Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the whole lot of the population had pledged to stand by us,' Jawad said. 'Tell them if they are scared they should leave but no one should raise a white flag,' he said.
But with the Swat TTP leadership at large and most of its fighting cadre either gone into hiding or melted away along with the millions of displaced people, government officials warn that the fighting against militancy is by no means over.
'They are all over the place and we have picked up so many of them that we are running out of space,' the official said.
