KARACHI: With a machine-gun in the back seat, his foot on the accelerator and wearing "Top Gun" style sunglasses, Azfar Mahesar pushes deeper into the heart of one of Karachi's "Talibanised" areas.
"This used to be a war zone, but we have liberated it," says the slightly chubby policeman with pride as his vehicle races through the Pakistani city of 20 million.
Over the past few years, one word has been on everyone's lips here: "Talibanisation."
If the remote mountains that straddle the Pakistan and Afghanistan border have been the militant group's playground, Karachi, Pakistan's economic hub on the Arabian Sea, has been the insurgents' hideout and cash-cow.
The Taliban dug deep into areas populated by ethnic Pashtuns, creating virtual "no-go zones" and terrorising the local population with extortion and kidnappings for ransom to provide funding for their militants.
But officials say that has all changed now.
"Talibanisation in Karachi has died down," says Mahesar, a former soldier turned senior police officer in the most dangerous, western part of the city.
"I can say very confidently 70 to 80 per cent are purged. There are a few remnants in Karachi but they are not as capable of coming back with the efficiency that they had a year or so ago," he adds.
Today, policemen wearing flak jackets are advancing deep into the bowels of one of the remaining "no-go zones", through dug-up streets and up rocky hills that mark the city's western edge.
"This was a local Taliban HQ," one says as he stands before a pulverised hovel.
Public enemy number one
The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been this country's public enemy number one since its formation in 2007.
Last December, the group carried out its deadliest attack ever, on a school in northwestern Peshawar, killing more than 150 people, mainly children.
Read: Taliban massacre 131 schoolchildren: Principal among 141 dead in attack on Army Public School, Peshawar
The TTP called it revenge for a military operation being carried out in North Waziristan, the epicentre of their jihadist movement and a sanctuary for Al Qaeda fighters along the Afghan border.
In response, the government gave the police and paramilitaries permission to lay siege to Talibanised areas, killing hundreds of suspected insurgents, without worrying much about due process.
"Peshawar opened the world's eyes. We had to act, even if it meant killing a thousand civilians," says one policeman on the mission.
All this occurred as the military made gains in North Waziristan, from where the Taliban of Karachi received orders.
"The disconnection between Karachi and Miramshah (capital of North Waziristan) has helped law enforcers to keep the Pashtun parts of the city safe and clear of the militancy," said Zia Ur-Rehman, an expert on security in Karachi.
Taliban fighters instead sought refuge in neighbouring Afghanistan, and Pakistan is now facing its lowest levels of terrorist violence in almost a decade.
Guarded by crocodiles
In the Manghophir district of Karachi, residents now say business is picking up. Extortion and racketeering by the Taliban — or criminals posing as them — is now almost a thing of the past.
"God be thanked that the Taliban have gone. People were scared, they wouldn't go out to the markets," says elderly Fatima, dressed in a large and multicoloured shawl, in front of the shrine of the Sufi Saint Pir Haji Mangho — which serves as a barometer of Jihadist presence.
Mystic and moderate Sufism were once the predominant forms of Islam practised by the Muslims of Pakistan, but the sect is seen as heretical by the hard line Taliban.
This mausoleum, which was last attacked by militants in 2014, is guarded by crocodiles swimming in a green pond.
When the Taliban controlled the area, "the crocodiles barely got to eat," says their guardian Khalifa Sajjad, a thin man wearing a red hat shimmering with tiny mirrors.
“Now the followers have come back, and are giving their offerings of meat."
In the hard scrabble Metroville district, where children bounce on a trampoline that has seen better days, Abdul Razzaq Khan, chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) political party in west Karachi, hails the anti-Taliban operation.
"God knows where they've gone. They're maybe hiding out here, or they've returned to where they came from, that's an unanswered question," he says, though he still believes criminals posing as Taliban were a bigger threat than the group themselves.
But for Rauf Khan, a member of the secular Pashtun ANP party, who last April survived the latest of several attempts on his life by the militants, there is no doubt things have changed drastically.
"Now we are mentally liberated. It somehow hasn't felt this way in 15 to 20 years," he said.
"Yesterday, I went to the cinema and came home late. I haven't done that in years."
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