Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani says Swat is as dear to him as Multan, his hometown. Being "careful about people's lives and property and also mindful of people abandoning their homes" he would adopt a new strategy, he told reporters on return from Davos on Sunday.
During his stay there, many world leaders also cautioned him that to a problem like militancy in Swat military operation is no solution, he added. He wants no more of the collateral damage though, he said, his government has the "capacity and will" to adopt any strategy. Obviously, a new strategy is being contemplated to handle the turmoil in Swat because the present one has not delivered.
As to the criterion of success of a strategy for Swat there are many points of view, but there are no two opinions about the fact that in the year-old expedition against militancy so far the net loser is the civilian non-combatant population of the valley.
While dozens of civilians get killed in shelling and misdirected aerial bombings or in cross-fire between security forces and militants daily thousands of them are on the move out of the war zones. How distressed they are, an AP photo in newspapers depicting a man carrying his elderly mother on his back as they flee troubled Swat offers a poignant comment.
Thanks to round-the-clock curfew, others who are not fleeing are holed up in their homes with extremely limited access to basic needs in freezing cold. Among these countless hapless 'home-bound prisoners' are some 400 students of a seminary at Mangalwar.
If a 'new strategy' is in the making why not to hold the fire so that the people shut up in their homes can come out and gather some food to eat and fire-wood to escape death by freezing. They all want to get out of the conflict areas; on Sunday alone some 15,000 reportedly reached Mingora.
The camps set up near Peshawar, Mardan and Nowshera are too far for the displaced, particularly when travel is not safe and often impossible to undertake given the curfew imposed on towns through which the roads pass.
If military operations keep their present tempo they are going to cause fresh displacement of up to 625,000 people, says an analysis of the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), predicting large-scale clashes and intensified military offensives throughout 2009, and possibly into 2010.
That means more collateral deaths and displacements. As of today, the provincial government's contribution to resolve the Swat imbroglio is quite dismal. Equally disappointing is the NWFP governor's inability to play his constitutional role in Fata. And, as for the federal government it is still juggling various options to find out the best that can help confront the daunting task of taming militancy.
Meanwhile, military operation is going apace with extensive collateral damage that has begun taking its toll. The public support for the military operation is diminishing; the recent resignation of an ANP federal minister as protest against military operation in Swat is a case in point.
The 3-D strategy of dialogue, development and deterrence, as explained by Prime Minister Gilani to his interlocutors at the World Economic Forum, of course sounds very good but it is not there on the ground, yet.
What we see there is only vast human tragedy. Let the government take its time to firm up the 3-D strategy or the 'new strategy' that the prime minister said he is not yet ready to spell out. But he can surely help alleviate human suffering in the troubled Swat and other restive areas by halting the military operations.
Every day that passes brings nothing but more killings and stepped-up exodus of worried non-combatants. Let there be a cease-fire. Militants are not asking for a separate state; theirs is an ideological struggle which should be encountered with a superior ideology and stronger logic. The option of military operation remains on the table but it should be exercised only as the last resort.
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