The road home for Sultan Mahmood was hardly a welcoming sight. The route through the mountains was scattered with burnt-out cars and lorries and lined with the wreckage of buildings destroyed as the army mounted its assault on the Taleban in and around the northwestern region of Swat.

At makeshift checkpoints along the way, troops peered from sandbagged machinegun posts as cars and vans snaked back into Buner, the district neighbouring Swat, that has now been declared free of the militants.

On the outskirts of Mr Mahmood’s village, Sultanwas, the wreckage of an army tank was still standing on the road — testament to the ferocity of the combat that forced him to flee, one of about two million refugees from the region.

Nothing, however, could have prepared the 65-year-old pensioner for the scene of utter devastation when he finally arrived home yesterday in the first wave of refugees to return. His house had been flattened by aerial bombing and artillery fire — along with almost a third of the village of about 1,000 homes.

“There’s a 42ft hole where my house used to be,” he told The Times and a handful of other visiting reporters, escorted by two dozen troops from the paramilitary Frontier Corps.

“We can’t tell whose house is whose, or who owns which belongings,” he said, nodding towards a giant pile of rubble, twisted metal and shredded personal effects.

Sultanwas was the site of one of the fiercest battles yet in the army’s campaign, which began after the Taleban advanced from Swat into Buner — bringing them to within 70 miles of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

The Government now says that Operation Rah-e-Rast (Righteous Path) is almost over and the refugees can go home, starting with Buner’s 700,000 residents.

The army is planning its next operation — against Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taleban, in his stronghold of South Waziristan — and wants to redeploy troops there. But the destruction in Sultanwas hints at the massive task still ahead here — both in terms of reconstruction and relief, and strengthening local government to ensure that the Taleban does not return.

Colonel Naseer Janjua, the Frontier Corps commander in Buner, said that fighting in the region was over and it was safe for refugees to come home.

“In phase one, the aim was to eliminate miscreants from the entire area and to make the entire region of Buner safe,” he said as he oversaw distribution of food in the town of Daggar.

“Thank God, phase one has now been completed.” He said that 8,000 families had returned to Buner in the past week, and many more were expected in the next few days as electricity had been restored in 70 per cent of the region.

The reality is far more complex. One Frontier Corps officer told The Times that there were still about 30 Taleban in the mountains of eastern Buner — and he did not have enough men even to confront them. “We’re waiting for reinforcements,” said the officer, who asked not to be identified. “I don’t know how long that’ll take.” He said that there were 2,200 troops in Buner — 1,000 from the Frontier Corps and 1,200 from the army. The region’s 600 police officers have yet to return to their jobs.

“That should be enough to hold the area we control,” he said. “We’ve got checkpoints on all the roads and people in the mountains.” What if the army withdraws from the region? “It won’t,” he said confidently. That was not the prevailing view among officers in nearby Ambela. One officer, who also asked not to be identified, thought that the army should stay for another seven or eight months.

“Everyone understands that the army can’t stay here for ever,” he said. “Now we’ve got the miscreants on the run, the climate of fear has gone for the local people.”

In Ambela and Daggar, at least, that seems to be true, as most people have more mundane concerns — such as what to eat and how to earn money. Those queuing for food said that local markets were open but prices had soared and the farms and marble factories that employed most people had been untended for two months.

In more remote villages homes were still deserted, shops and markets closed and fear of the Taleban still palpable. Mohammed Anwar, 19. a newspaper salesman, had stayed in Sultanwas throughout the fighting that destroyed all but two rooms of his family home. “I have no future — I worked for years to build a home, and now I’m finished,” he said. “As soon as the army leaves, the Taleban will come back.”

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