The last time Pakistan had declared victory against the Taliban in the Bajaur tribal region overlooking Kunar province in Afghanistan was in spring 2009. Last month, a similar claim has been made again. What the 'fall of Bajaur' means for Pakistan and the Taliban?
Bajaur lies at a strategic junction connecting Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province with Pakistan's mainland, providing an important supply route for both the foreign and local militants fighting the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan and government troops in Pakistan. This tribal district is home to Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, the militant Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) deputy chief, and borders Dir district to link with the Swat Valley where militancy forced military offensives last year that triggered the internal displacement of over two million residents from Swat itself and neighbouring Buner and Lower Dir districts.
"The thing is they [militants] have lost their support. They´ve lost the terrain where they could operate and they´ve lost the population, who they were coercing. So they are not really effective anymore," the chief operation commander Major-General Tariq Khan told reporters on March 2 after his paramilitary force, backed by regular troops, captured Damadola which served as the Taliban's "nerve centre" in Bajaur.
The United States has long suspected that al-Qaeda network chief Osama bin Laden and his deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri may have been hiding somewhere in the border regions of Kunar and Bajaur. And a missile strike from CIA-operated unmanned spy plane in Damadola in 2006 was aimed at the No.2 of al-Qaeda. However, he escaped the attack unhurt.