The kids from the school they massacred were as young aa 4-years-old.

LONDON — The unprecedented slaughter Tuesday of more than 125 people, most of them children, at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, shows in the most gruesome possible way that the Pakistani Taliban, known as the TTP, have not yet been defeated or brought under control by the Pakistani military’s recent offensives. Certainly that was the objective of the attack: The school is a private one run by the army for the children of soldiers.

“The TTP is ready for a long, long war against the U.S. puppet state of Pakistan,” a TTP commander told me when I reached him on his Afghan cellphone. “We are just displaced, but we are still in positions to attack wherever we want,” said Jihad Yar Wazir.

Yar Wazir justified the killings as fitting retribution. “The parents of the army school are army soldiers and they are behind the massive killing of our kids and indiscriminate bombing in North and South Waziristan,” which are the TTP strongholds. “To hurt them at their safe haven and homes—such an attack is perfect revenge.”