LONDON – UK weekly The Economist has said Pakistan’s army, which fought a22-month campaign from 2014 to evict militants from North Waziristan, istrying to transform the town from a byword for extremism into a showcase ofthe stability to which the generals say the country is returning.

The army lost nearly 500 men in the fighting. About 3,400 militants werekilled; many more fled across the border to Afghanistan. Signs of theviolence are everywhere. But so too are efforts to provide greaterprosperity for traumatised civilians (nearly 1m people living in the regionwere displaced). New roads fan out from the town.

Lots of buildings, including shops, clinics and a sports stadium, are goingup. A children’s playground has been laid out next to the river that flowsthrough the town, dotted with Disneyfied fake cows.

There are ambitious plans for development elsewhere in North Waziristan.The army wants to build schools and bring water and electricity toneglected villages. It even talks of tourism. But the forts dotted acrossthe barren hills are a reminder that security is more tenuous outside MiranShah than the briefing given by the army in an underground bunker suggests.Indeed, a rocket attack on an army vehicle just a few miles away on the dayof your correspondent’s visit killed two soldiers and injured three more.

The number of civilians killed by jihadists in the Federally AdministeredTribal Areas (FATA), which includes North Waziristan, rose from 86 in 2016to 138 last year, according to the FATA Research Centre, an independentthink-tank.

North Waziristan has remained fairly quiet, but the neighbouring district,Kurram, accounted for 76% of casualties, suggesting that some of thefighters ejected from North Waziristan are still uncomfortably close by.

Among those now holed up in Kurram is the Haqqani network, an ally of theAfghan Taliban that America says the Pakistani army is shielding. In hisfirst tweet of 2018, Donald Trump accused Pakistan of “lies and deceit”. Helater suspended $2bn in military aid. An American drone strike in NorthWaziristan last month reportedly killed a Haqqani commander and two of hisaccomplices. It came just a day after a deadly attack on a hotel in Kabulthat Afghan officials claimed was carried out by the Haqqanis.

As part of a new campaign launched last year, it has stepped up itscounter-terrorism efforts across FATA. In 2017 it carried out 164“intelligence-led operations” targeting jihadists within the country,especially the Pakistani arm of the Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan(TTP).

The army’s pounding of the insurgents has had an effect. According to theSouth Asia Terrorism Portal, a website that monitors terrorism across theregion, civilian deaths from extremist attacks in Pakistan have droppedfrom over 3,000 in 2013 to 540 last year. The figure is on track to fallagain this year, with just 24 deaths so far.

Officials maintain that the majority of terrorist attacks in Pakistan noworiginate from Afghanistan, where the TTP and other groups have found ahaven in the country’s “wild east”. Since the bulk of NATO forces leftAfghanistan in 2014, border provinces such as Paktika, Khost, Nangarhar andKunar (see map) have become largely ungoverned spaces from which jihadistscan operate with relative impunity.

Nasser Janjua, a retired general who is national security adviser to PrimeMinister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, says he has evidence that 143 attacks inPakistan have been organised by groups in Afghanistan. Mr Janjua accusesIndian and Afghan spooks of helping the TTP and Islamic State (IS), whichis also active in Balochistan.

The army is seeking to reduce what it sees as the mayhem spreading acrossthe border with Afghanistan by building a fence along all accessible partsof the 2,400km frontier.

Maj-Gen Asif Ghafoor, the army spokesman, says that the first phase,covering the most vulnerable 270 miles, should be completed by the end ofthe year and the rest of the $550m project a year after that. It willconsist of two tall fences with barbed wire, about two metres apart.Pressure sensors and CCTV cameras will run along its length. There will bemanned posts every mile or so and 443 forts along its course.

One potential beneficiary of the army’s campaign against domestic terrorismis the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This is the Pakistani legof China’s Belt and Road Initiative to revive Asia’s ancient trading routes.

China is investing over $60bn to upgrade Pakistan’s neglectedinfrastructure. New roads, railways, much-needed power stations and adeep-water commercial port at Gwadar in Balochistan are all part of theplan, which would link western China with the Arabian Sea. The projectscould account for 20% of Pakistan’s GDP over the next five years and boosteconomic growth by three percentage points.