PAKISTAN is facing the world's largest internal displacement of people amid renewed fighting between the Taliban and government forces, the President has warned.
Asif Ali Zardari called for immediate aid yesterday after more than a million people were forced to leave their homes, with another 500,000 expected to stream out of conflict zones within days.
As he prepared to hold emergency talks with US President Barack Obama and Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai in Washington, Mr Zardari said a failure to assist refugees would turn the North West Frontier Province into a "breeding ground for terrorism".
More than 40,000 people have poured out of the Swat Valley in the past three days after Taliban militants signalled an end to a peace deal by ambushing troops and seizing government offices in the town of Mingora.
A curfew on the district was briefly lifted to allow residents to evacuate but fighting intensified yesterday after the Government sent in more troops backed by helicopter gunships. Up to 35 civilians and 15 militants were reportedly killed in clashes yesterday.
Humanitarian agencies were straining to accommodate the thousands of refugees pouring into towns and refugee camps across the NWFP.
Swat chief administrator Khushhal Khan said he expected up to 500,000 people, already brutalised by the Taliban's 18-month campaign for control of the area, to attempt to flee the district in coming days.
"I don't want my unborn baby to have even the slightest idea what suicide attacks and bomb blasts are. That's why I'm leaving Mingora with my husband," said a sobbing, pregnant Bakht Zehra. "For God's sake, tell me where I can bring up my child where there are no suicide attacks."
The Pakistan Government struck a peace deal with the Taliban in February, agreeing to impose a harsh form of sharia law on Swat and surrounding districts in exchange for an end to the violence in the region.
A bill formalising the agreement was passed through parliament a fortnight ago. But the Taliban has refused to lay down its arms, instead expanding its reach from the Swat stronghold into other regions across the NWFP, including Lower Dir and Buner, just 100km from the capital, Islamabad.
The UN High Commission for Refugees spokeswoman Massoumeh Farman-Farmaian said three new camps would be established in Mardan and Swabi this week to accommodate the estimated 100,000 people forced to leave Lower Dir and Buner.
But many of the existing camps and host communities were already exhausted and the international community had been slow to respond to UN pleas for assistance. "We keep wondering why people don't recognise this desperate need," Ms Farman-Farmaian told The Australian.
Anger in the refugee camps was heightening, creating fertile ground for militant recruitment, she added.
"(We have to) give these people the assistance they need and deserve and act as a buffer because tomorrow if they don't get a chance and some other group, maybe militants or Taliban, offers them funds, then they are going to take them."
In Kacha Garhi camp in NWFP's capital, Peshawar, more than 16,000 people live in makeshift tents with limited food and water, and no electricity.
Most were displaced by an aerial bombing campaign by the Pakistani army launched last August to flush out Taliban forces.
Many blame the Government and militants as architects of their misery.
Source: The Australian
Posts
