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Press TV has conducted an interview with Tariq Pirzada, political and strategic affairs analyst from Islamabad, about Pakistani military helicopters pounding militant hideouts in the country’s restive northwest in a continuing massive operation against pro-Taliban elements in the trial belt.

Press TV: What are your thoughts on the military operations in the tribal regions? Do you believe that Islamabad is adequately dealing with the fallout of these attacks on the local residents of these areas?

Pirzada: Well there are two things. This time is different from the last time when the Pakistan army carried out an operation in South Waziristan. This is not Waziristan and some steps were taken to evacuate nearly five to seven hundred thousand residents of that district or what is normally called agency, it is called the North Waziristan agency.

So it looks like that based on the previous experience and learning from the past Pakistan has been able to at least evacuate the area and now the military operation is only targeting the miscreants and the terrorists in the area.

So to that extent yes, the answer is affirmative but on the other side the number of these IDPs, internally displaced persons, that is huge. Five to seven hundred thousand people, they have to be taken care of in this heat and they have to be provided food and everything else in the month of Ramadan.

So while the government is trying … not all the things have been done to take care of that but issue was if too much notice had been given to residents, then the miscreants would have fled. So it was a balancing act which the armed forces and the government did, that they tried to evacuate most of the people on time but then of course providing them with food and shelter and necessary clothing and other things that is to some extent being provided but it will still take some time and these IDPs will have to face some tough time for another week to ten days.

Press TV: Mr. Pirzada, you said that this time is different from the previous attacks but looking at these attacks as a whole, many observers, they do have conflicting thoughts on the military offensives in these regions. They say that the destruction that it conjures outweighs the benefits. Do you see it in that light as well?

Pirzada: Well actually this has been the standard policy of the government of Pakistan that any action by drones or by military means is always counterproductive but because the talks had fallen apart with the Taliban in this area - I am talking about the Pakistani Taliban - and these talks went on for month after month and then we saw what happened at the Karachi International Airport.

That was the point. It was the red line drawn by the government and the armed forces and so we saw the commencement of this and the launching of this offensive and for this reason I would say now that because most of the population is out of the area, so the individual human death toll is very minimal almost, you can never use phrase negligible but it is minimal rather near to zero.

So the operation is going on, both the air and the ground offensive that is against the Taliban and that is in full swing at the present time.