This time the signs are that Pakistan’s army means business in South Waziristan. Civilians, who have fled the ground offensive launched on October 17th in their tens of thousands, tell of intense aerial bombardment. Three previous campaigns against the Pakistani Taliban there since 2004 petered out. Either they were carried out half-heartedly, or bafflingly abandoned in the midst of battle. They left the obscurantist thugs in even firmer control of the region. Now the army seems determined to wrench it back.

With journalists kept away from the fighting, and the two sides giving differing accounts, the progress of the campaign is not clear. But the size of the exodus from South Waziristan suggests fighting is intense. By the middle of this week over 17,500 now destitute families, an estimated 128,000 individuals, had registered as displaced people with the authorities in the towns of Dera Ismail Khan and Tank.

As further evidence that the army has at last decided to close down the terrorists’ haven for good, locals point to the huge scale of the troop mobilisation seen rumbling through on its way to South Waziristan. Moreover, the authorities have also tried hard to rid Dera Ismail Khan of the sectarian violence that usually plagues it.

Pakistan’s international allies, as well as the terrorised locals, have long pressed for real action in a mountainous lawless area that had become a jihadist playground. Afghan insurgents, al-Qaeda commanders and Pakistani extremists have had their own fiefs. The army’s campaign, however, is not aimed at the anti-Western Taliban groups which are not at war with Pakistan. They operate from one half of South Waziristan and from North Waziristan, against foreign forces in Afghanistan.

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