FATA Follies?

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For a moment there, I was excited by the possibility that the Pakistani Army might consolidate its gains in the Swat Valley and try a little of the "hold" and "build" phases of counterinsurgency. It now seems, though, as if the Pakistani Army is going to push into southern Waziristan in an effort to capture or kill Baitullah Mehsud, the rebel Islamist leader. This following sentence was, actually, the scariest thing I read all yesterday:

"Baitullah is the root cause of all the problems. He is the axis of evil," [Provincial Gov. Owais] Ghani told reporters.

Now why does that scare me? Well, first off, convincing one's self that your only problem is with this one guy -- and that once you kill him, everything will be alright -- has been proven to be a losing strategy time and time again in struggles against violent non-state actors. Whether one is talking about Israeli targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders or U.S. efforts to capture or kill Saddam Hussein and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, we have seen that killing key leadership might only have a negligible effect on the environment. How many days of peace did we get in Iraq when we killed Zarqawi? 18, I think?"
Abu Muqaqarna