No sooner had Pakistan announced its plans to attack South Waziristan than some pundits began to hail the operation as the Waterloo of the Taleban and al-Qaeda militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

The proposed offensive does indeed appear to be a victory for President Obama’s new AfPak strategy, which tries to take a more cohesive approach to the region. If the assault, as expected, coincides with a surge of US troops in southern Afghanistan, the militants will soon be under fire from all sides and robbed of the safe havens they have enjoyed since late 2001.

A meeting between the leaders of India and Pakistan in Russia today could also pave the way for India to reduce troop levels in Kashmir, allowing Pakistan to deploy more soldiers against the Taleban.

Anyone who has observed Pakistan since 2001 has to be acutely aware of the army’s technical limitations, of South Waziristan’s deeply inhospitable terrain and of the militants’ resilience. They will also be mindful that Pakistan has long drawn a distinction between good and bad militants, helping the US to kill or capture foreigners, while shielding locals it considers to be potential future assets.

There is no doubt that Pakistan now considers Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taleban leader, to be a bad militant as he has boasted of his responsibility for a spate of suicide bombings in the past few weeks. The worry for the US is that once the Pakistani Army kills or captures him it will withdraw from South Waziristan, as it does not see the other militants in the region to be a threat to Pakistan.

That would waste an opportunity not just to stamp out Taleban incursions into Afghanistan, but also to establish central government control over South Waziristan for the first time since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.

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