After dragging its feet for over a decade, the Pakistan army has finally launched an operation in the North Waziristan Agency (NWA), the hapless region that the country’s security planners had virtually ceded to local, cross-border and global terrorists. Half a million Pashtun civilians, forced to vacate their homes, are at the mercy of nature’s elements. They need emergency logistical assistance — not just government handouts — to avert a humanitarian disaster. The army has deflected international pressure at least since 2010 to act decisively against the terrorists in NWA. The former army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, had stubbornly refused to carry out the operation while analysts echoing the establishment’s thinking described the terrorists as assets that “would protect the country’s western flank”. The devastating domestic blowback, with thousands killed in the slew of suicide bombings, almost each one traced back to NWA, could not convince the ex-Chief of Army Staff (COAS) to act. Does one thank the stars that the stalling has ended or is the offensive, christened Zarb-e-Azb, which many news outlets spelled and transliterated incorrectly, too little and too late?

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