A test Pakistan has failed before

On the second full day after declaring the state was at war, Pakistan's prime minster said today that Pakistan was "fighting for its survival" in its attempts to "eliminate" the Taliban from the Swat Valley, from where they have distributed brutal forms of justice and extended their reach to an area just a few mountain tops away from the capital, Islamabad.
As soldiers again square off against the Taliban in Swat, an influential US newspaper writes, Pakistan faces a test it has often failed before – fighting an insurgency while caring for those displaced by the conflict.

Military officials say they are determined to continue the current offensive until they control the 400-square-mile area. But it is far from clear that the army will do any better this time than last when it was ground to a halt by the Taliban.
“Everyone here believes they [the Taliban] are coming back,” a 21-year-old in Takht Bhai told the paper.Over the past four years the military has struggled through a series of campaigns against the Taliban in the mountains. Most, like the battle in Swat, ended in a standstill.

Curfew lift lets more flee Pakistani valley

Thousands of fearful civilians, many on foot, fled a war-torn Pakistani valley on Sunday to take advantage of a lifted curfew that could precede an even more intense round of fighting between the military and the Taliban.

Pakistan has urged residents of the Swat Valley to leave over the past week, while its warplanes have pounded the militant-held region in what the prime minister called a "war of the country's survival." Hundreds of thousands have already fled, adding a humanitarian crisis to the nuclear-armed nation's economic, political and other woes.
As soon as the curfew was lifted early Sunday, residents in major Swat towns began to leave in any way they could.