washingtonpost.com
ISLAMABAD - U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke hailed on Thursday the return home of many of the 2.5 million people displaced by fighting in Pakistan's Swat valley despite pockets of Taliban resistance.
Holbrooke described securing valleys, where the Pakistan army opened up an offensive against the militants more than three months ago, as the first priority.
"I think they've got their hands full in Swat and Buner, Holbrooke told journalists before leaving for Afghanistan at the end of two days of talks with the Pakistani political and military leadership in Islamabad.
Holbrooke said this was the likely reason why the army was delaying an all-out assault further west against the stronghold of Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud in the remote South Waziristan tribal region.
"They've got to make sure when the refugees come back that they have security, so maybe they're delaying the offensive," he said, adding that he did not know the timing or nature of the looming action against Mehsud.
The United Nations said on Thursday nearly 400,000 people had returned home from the camps and makeshift shelters.
"They're returning in large numbers, thousands a day, and I think that is good news," he said.
Holbrooke spoke of the heavy U.S. financial assistance for Pakistan's government, military and its displaced people, and said that he hoped to announce help for Pakistan to overcome crippling power generation shortages when he returned next month.
PAKISTANI PRIORITIES
The Pakistani government gave orders to the army a month ago to go after Mehsud, who leads a loose grouping of some 13 Taliban factions dotted across the northwest.
Mehsud has come under frequent air and artillery bombardment since then but there are few signs of an imminent ground assault on his redoubt in the mountains.
The army is probably waiting to free up some of the 20,000 troops currently deployed in Swat, according to diplomats who follow military affairs.
Although Mehsud has helped provide fighters for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and trained suicide bombers to attack Afghan and Western forces, most of his focus has been on attacking the Pakistani state.
Several diplomats in Islamabad doubted whether eliminating Mehsud would provide any great strategic value for Western forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, but Holbrooke disagreed.
"I think Baitullah Mehsud is one of the most dangerous and odious people in the region and the United States had paid insufficient attention to him until recently," he said.
He said it made sense for the Pakistani government to first go after the militants, like Mehsud and Fazlullah, the Taliban commander in Swat, that posed a threat to their nation.
WHERE DID THE TALIBAN GO?
Pakistan has also moved forces to Baluchistan, to patrol the southwest province's border with Helmand, the southern Afghan province where U.S. forces began an operation against the Taliban earlier this month.
Holbrooke stressed that there was increasingly tight cooperation between the Pakistani and U.S. and NATO forces.
He also said there was little evidence that Taliban fighters had fled from Helmand to Pakistan, but he had still to discover how the guerrillas had melted away.
"So far they haven't really showed up, but we want to avoid the mistake of 2002 when U.S. offensives ignored the consequences in Pakistan," Holbrooke said.
Thousands of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters fled to Pakistan's tribal lands to escape the onslaught of U.S. backed forces in late 2001, when Holbrooke said there had been a lack of coordination with Pakistan.
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