When Yusuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister, recently sought to encapsulate the army’s campaign against Islamist insurgents in the Swat valley, he came up with the somewhat bland: “We have achieved the targets.”

His assessment was less definitive than George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech of 2003, in which the former US president prematurely declared victory in Iraq. But Mr Gilani’s statement still carried a cautious sense that something important and lasting had been achieved in the picturesque Swat valley.