Is Pakistan winning?

Even the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, Pakistan’s largest and most powerful spy agency, has turned against the Pakistani Taliban. “The ISI is right at the centre of the struggle against Baitullah Mehsud and what they regard as part of the jihadist movement that has gotten out of control and now needs to be brought back under control,” says Riedel, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank. “They are very actively involved in the business of trying to break the Pakistani Taliban into fractured little bits that can be more easily dealt with.”

Secondly, the army now has the support of the population. Pakistanis were appalled by video footage made public in April that showed Taliban in Swat viciously whipping a teenaged girl who had supposedly violated some aspect of Islamic law. This naked extremism, combined with their seemingly unstoppable spread out of Pakistan’s frontier regions and into the heart of the country, alarmed Pakistan’s citizens. Many had previously believed that the Taliban threat was exaggerated or that they only menaced foreigners in Afghanistan. By this spring they accepted the necessity of a decisive confrontation.

Finally, U.S. President Barack Obama’s refocusing of America’s anti-terror efforts on South Asia has had an effect on the ground in Pakistan. Co-operation between the United States and Pakistan has increased. And while American drone attacks are risky because of the potential for civilian casualties, and therefore public anger, they have also eliminated senior Taliban leaders who would otherwise have been all but untouchable.

But Pakistan’s offensive, while significant, is also limited in scope. The leadership of the Afghan Taliban is still safe in Quetta. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the jihadist group behind last year’s attacks in Mumbai, remains intact. The North-West Frontier Province might be coming back under the control of the Pakistani state, but Waziristan, a stronghold for both the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda, is beyond its reach. “What we haven’t seen yet is a decision to go after the entire Frankenstein,” says Riedel. “There is a selective response.”

True, says Hoffman, but he adds: “Only a fool attacks all its enemies at one time. The fact that they’re taking action against the Pakistani Taliban, compared to a year ago, is an important step. If it can be sustained over an indefinite period and kept up at a fairly intense level, it would be a huge step forward.”

The problem, especially for Afghanistan and for Canadian troops fighting there, is that Pakistan isn’t convinced that the Afghan Taliban are their enemies. “I think they still see them as a useful tool,” says Hoffman. The reasons are the same as they have always been: Pakistan worries most about India, and the Taliban are a tool to fight India’s influence in Pakistan’s backyard.

“From a Pakistani point of view, they’re not comfortable surrendering their assets, especially when there’s so much uncertainty about what the United States is going to do in Afghanistan,” says Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who previously worked at the U.S. State Department. “So why surrender their ties to the Afghan Taliban if they’re still useful?”

The result is that Pakistan is trying to separate potentially helpful militants—such as the Afghan Taliban or Lashkar-e-Taiba—from those that endanger Pakistan itself, such as al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. It’s a risky strategy. “These groups are incredibly networked and can share expertise and personnel when it suits their interests,” says Markey.

Pakistan, in other words, is still playing something of a double game. Jihadists will continue to find sanctuary there, as long as they don’t threaten their hosts.

The Pakistani Taliban did threaten Pakistan. They may do so again. But, for now, they have been knocked on their heels, driven from large chunks of territory that they effectively controlled only months ago. That reversal would have been hard to predict earlier this year. It’s a modest success, but it’s an important one.