The Pakistani Army has already lost the federally-administered tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan, and the Swat Valley. Now the insurgents are moving east, further into Pakistan proper, and they aren't meeting with much resistance. In Bush-speak, this means that the militants are "desperate". In the language that the rest of the world uses, they are in ascendance.
Meanwhile Bush wrings his hands in a most powerful manner. He is willing to escalate to finger-crossing if it comes to that, however.
story from the New York Times
Militants Gain Despite Decree by Musharraf
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Nov. 15 — Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, says he instituted emergency rule for the extra powers it would give him to push back the militants who have carved out a mini-state in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
But in the last several days, the militants have extended their reach, capturing more territory in Pakistan’s settled areas and chasing away frightened policemen, local government officials said.
As inconspicuous as it might be in a nation of 160 million people, the takeover of the small Alpuri district headquarters this week was considered a particular embarrassment for General Musharraf. It showed how the militants could still thumb their noses at the Pakistani Army.
In fact, local officials and Western diplomats said, there is little evidence that the 12-day-old emergency decree has increased the government’s leverage in fighting the militants, or that General Musharraf has used the decree to take any extraordinary steps to combat them.
Instead, it has proved more of a distraction, they said, forcing General Musharraf to concentrate on his own political survival, even as the army starts its first offensive operation since the Nov. 3 decree.
The success of the militants in Swat has caused new concern in Washington about the ability and the will of Pakistani forces to fight the militants who are now training their sights directly on Pakistan’s government, not only on the NATO and American forces across the border in Afghanistan, Western officials said.
After several weeks of heavy clashes, the militants largely control Swat, the mountainous region that is the scenic jewel of Pakistan, and are pushing into Shangla, to the east. All of the sites lie deeper inside Pakistan than the tribal areas, on the Afghan border, where Al Qaeda, the Taliban and assorted foreign and local militants have expanded a stronghold in recent years. In Alpuri, the administrative headquarters of Shangla, a crowd of militants easily took over the police station, despite the emergency decree, Mayor Ibad Khan said.
“They came straight to the police station; it was empty,” he said in a telephone interview. The district police officer had run away. “I am still searching for him,” Mr. Khan said. Asked why the police station was empty, he said, “I am asking myself the same question.”
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Even though the militants numbered only in the hundreds, they would give “a tough time to the army, and they will cost the army a lot,” said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a military analyst in Lahore.He said the army would probably be able to expel the militants from the cities and towns. But the militants would take shelter in the mountains, and could survive the winter unscathed.
The soldiers, almost all of whom do not come from the region and feel like outsiders there, are unprepared for what could amount to a guerrilla war, he said.
Another problem was the intense barrage of propaganda from the religious clerics in the region. The messages exhorting soldiers not to fight a “foreigners war,” meaning a war on behalf of the United States, had undermined the morale of the government paramilitary forces that were leading the fight, he said.
“The army has never faced such a serious challenge in the tribal areas or in Swat before,” Mr. Rizvi said.
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