Fighting the Taliban: Insurgents Slip From One Pakistan City to Battle in Another

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The Pakistani military warned today that the house-to-house combat its troops are fighting in the Swat Valley's capital would not be a decisive battle against the Taliban insurgency in the area, saying militants had slipped out of the city to fight another day.

Pakistani soldiers stand guard on top of a mountain overlooking the Swat valley at Banai Baba Ziarat...

Pakistani soldiers stand guard on top of a mountain overlooking the Swat valley at Banai Baba Ziarat area on May 22, 2009 in northwest Pakistan. Pakistani officials say the fighting in Swat and across three districts in the volatile northwest is for the countryâ??s very "existence."

(Pedro Ugarte/Pool Photo)

The army has secured more than 50 percent of Mingora, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the military's chief spokesman, told ABC News, but he said fighters are "withdrawing from the city." "The fighting is not as stiff as it could be. It appears that the last ditch battle will not be there," Abbas said.

Pakistani officials say the fighting in Swat and across three districts in the volatile northwest is for Pakistan's very "existence." The military has failed to finish this same battle twice before, and there is a widespread sense that if it fails again, and if the administration fails to fill the governance vacuums that helped the Taliban spread, they will never again enjoy the level of popular support that this operation has.

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But that support will be tested in the next few weeks and months as more than 2 million internally displaced Pakistanis from the northwest begin to get anxious to return to their homes, aid workers say.

The fighting has created the largest population exodus since Rwanda in 1994, and with the vast majority of the displaced living in friends' or families' homes, aid workers warn that their patience will begin to fade. Many of them are already losing their only source of income: crops, which are supposed to be harvested this month and are rotting as the fighting prevents many people from returning to their farms.

"People are really getting frustrated. The support they're getting is not what they should be getting," says Amjad Jamal, who works with the World Food Program in Islamabad.

Another aid worker, who declined to be identified, said too much of the relief was going to camps and not enough was going to homes where the displaced are often straining already cramped quarters and pinched pocketbooks.

"The villages outside of the camps have received almost zero aid from anyone," the aid worker said. "Some people are saying they're going to throw strikes in the street."