Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan’s capture of Taliban- controlled towns in South Waziristan may have limited strategic value unless soldiers pursue militants into their mountainous hideouts, said a former special forces commander.

“Infantry forces are moving along the main roads and not up into the side valleys,” ex-army brigadier Javed Hussain said in a telephone interview from Islamabad. With winter snows only weeks away, the offensive has stuck to three highways, he said.

Troops are engaged in street-to-street fighting in Ladha, the military said today, and 30 militants had been killed in the last 24 hours in the region. The army had cleared a major part of Sararogha in one of the battle zone’s three main valleys, it said in its latest report on the 19-day-old campaign.

Soldiers are trying to take control of the South Waziristan homeland of the Mehsuds, an ethnic Pashtun tribe that supplies the core of the largest Taliban force, about 10,000 fighters.

The most secure areas for guerrillas are in two forested mountain ranges, one west of Sararogha that includes the Asman Manza valley. The other is the Shawal range, near the Afghan border, with peaks exceeding 3,700 meters (11,000 feet).

The Taliban say their forces are falling back deliberately before advancing troops to fight what spokesman Azam Tariq called a “long war,” the Associated Press reported yesterday. Areas that “the army is claiming to have won are being vacated by us” to draw the army into a trap deep inside South Waziristan, he said.

Escape Routes

Accounts of the fighting are difficult to confirm as Pakistan bars foreigners from the tribal areas and local journalists have been forced out by the government and Taliban.

The army has said it dropped groups of soldiers onto strategic mountain ridges to protect its advance. Those forces are too small to enter the forested valleys and ravines where the Taliban will regroup, Hussain said.

Pakistan says the offensive in South Waziristan has cut off escape routes to prevent the Taliban from fleeing in large numbers. The army began the operation, its largest against Islamic militants, on Oct. 17, and said it has killed about 300 guerrillas. The Taliban has responded with suicide bombings and attacks that have killed more than 300 people.

“There is no place for the Taliban in Pakistan,” the Associated Press of Pakistan cited Interior Minister Rehman Malik as saying in a radio interview yesterday in Islamabad. “The entire nation has said ‘no’ to the Taliban.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Anwar Shakir in Karachi at ashakir1@bloomberg.net; James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 4, 2009 06:27 EST