Linked by a desire to be able to pursue their fundamentalist Islamic ideology free of censure, militants share common ground in wishing to see Nato leave Afghanistan and the Pakistani army withdraw from Fata. Further than this, the aspirations of different militant groupings vary hugely. Some seek to overthrow the Pakistani government, others to fight a regional jihad. But in Fata the average TTP gunslinger probably has political horizons no further than those of his own tribal area.

In this light, though an attractive proposition for those seeking to make sense of the militancy, the emirate concept appears trite and simplistic. Given the Pashtun tribes' historical tradition of internecine conflict, the idea of any monolithic form of resistance or objective tests credibility, and the Pakistani army is quick to denounce the theory, describing the militants as a loosely connected grouping of "miscreants". "Each has its own vested interests built up by criminals and small-time hoods who have tried to legitimise themselves under a single platform," Major General Tariq Khan, commander of the army's operation in Bajaur, told me. "Some are affiliated to the TTP, which hires guns to smaller groups. But I see no coherent strategy in any of the groups."

Western diplomats agree with him. But further accord quickly diverges. America is happy to use its Predators to strike at al-Qaeda cells in Fata as part of a target list of militant commanders such as Mullah Nazir and Bahadur Gul, who are believed responsible for sending insurgents across the border into Afghanistan. But these commanders in turn are left to their own devices by the Pakistani army, which does not view them as directly hostile to the country's own interests.

Conversely, the US has so far refrained from hitting TTP elements who restrict their activity solely to Pakistan. Pakistani security officials told me that on several occasions they had passed on the location of Baitullah Mehsud to the Americans, hoping he would be killed by a Predator, to no avail.