The BBC's Barbara Plett had a Feb. 29 story on how Pakistan's army had success taming the Swat Valley.

She left out how many troops were involved. According to a Dec. 22, 2007 NYT story, there were 20,000 Pakistani soldiers involved in the Swat Valley operation.

According to Wikipedia, the Swat Valley is about 1,772 square kilometres in size.

Kandahar is about 54,000 square kilometres in size, and there are 2,500 Canadian troops there, according calculations I did in the post Afghanistan by the numbers.

The Pakistan army had 11,287 soldiers per 1,000 square kilometres in Swat.

In Kandahar, Canada has about 46 soldiers per 1,000 square km.

That's based on the full contingent. According to a weekend Globe and Mail article, only about 600 Canadian troops are involved in security operations "outside the wire" at any one time.

While Pakistan's army claimed success, on Saturday, a suicide bomber killed 38 people in Mingora, the Swat Valley's main centre.