In February, many commentators lauded the elections in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)--in which the region's religious parties were swept out of power in favor of secular-minded parties--as a major victory in the war on terror. Others warned at the time that the significance of the election results was being overstated. Developments in the past couple of months have shown that much of the celebratory commentary was indeed overly optimistic. Examples of unqualified optimism following the NWFP elections abound. Shahfat Mahmood, a Pakistani politician, told Voice of America: "What it means for the NWFP is people can look forward to a rollback of Talibanization, people can look forward to a more focused, concerted approach of the government to battling terrorism." Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation wrote in the Washington Times that "[p]erhaps the most important outcome" of Pakistan's elections "was the victory of a secular Pashtun party in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) over religious parties sympathetic to the Taliban." And former NWFP government official Mahmood Shah told McClatchy Newspapers that officials there would now "become more willing to cooperate with Afghanistan in suppressing Islamic militants." In early March, I warned in the Middle East Times that the implications of the elections for terrorism in the NWFP were being overstated:

[T]here is reason to question whether the significance of the results is being overstated…. First, there is already concern in Washington about the approach the winning parties are planning to adopt vis-à-vis the Taliban. Farhana Ali, an associate international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation who recently returned from a 10-day trip to Pakistan, told me that many Pakistanis are fatigued by this war. "They see it as America's war," she said, "but there is a new strand of thought emerging that the Pakistanis need to choose their own strategies." One such strategy that worries many Washington analysts is the new coalition's willingness to negotiate with the Taliban. The RAND Corporation's Seth Jones told me, "There is a strong desire among even the secular parties to engage in dialogue with militant groups. From a strategic perspective, I don't see this as a major win for the United States."

Jones was correct. Immediately after taking office, the NWFP government began negotiations with the Taliban even though past agreements with Pakistan's militants (such as the infamous Waziristan accords) had failed. Contrary to the cheery prediction of "a rollback of Talibanization," Pakistan's Daily Times reports that the NWFP government has actually cooperated with the militant Tehreek-e-Taliban group led by Baitullah Mehsud in the implementation of sharia law in the NWFP's Malakand division. This was one of the Taliban's demands in its talks with the NWFP government: as one Taliban representative told the Daily Times, the group "demanded implementation of Shariah law, the army's withdrawal from Swat, the release of all Taliban prisoners without pre-conditions and compensation for damages to civilians during military operations in Swat."

I noted back in March: "One of the major reasons the United States has had a strategic problem with militants in Pakistan is that they effectively control certain portions of the tribal areas due to their force of arms.… Quite simply, elections will not remove these safe havens." This remains true. Militant safe havens remain, and the extremists' offensives to seize more territory have not abated. There are daily reports of skirmishes, bombings, and other militant attacks in Swat, Bajaur, and elsewhere in the NWFP. While the NWFP elections were certainly not a setback, there is no reason at this point to see them as a major strategic advance against terrorism. While I believe that negotiations can be part of a holistic solution to militancy in Pakistan's tribal areas, the NWFP's government has not adopted a sophisticated negotiation strategy designed to solve the Waziristan accords' plain shortcomings: the new political parties have simply stepped up their efforts to adopt old, failed policies. Rather than rolling back, Talibanization will likely march forward.