Farmers in north-west were preparing for a bumper harvest when a punishing military assault against Taliban fighters sent them fleeing their homes. They fear hardship and hunger as crops spoil in untended fields, with aid agencies warning that it could take years for farmers to recover.
Aerial bombardments, shelling and fierce battles between government troops and Islamist insurgents in the rugged north-west have uprooted about 1.5 million people from their homes since the onslaught began on April 26. Most of them were farmers who abandoned fields of wheat, maize, vegetables and rice, which now lie rotting as the battles rage.
"I have left it at the mercy of Allah, only he can now look after my fields and my crop," said 68-year-old Fazal Karim, standing under the scorching sun outside his tent at Yar Hussain camp just south of the fighting. Karim grows onions, wheat and rice on five acres (two hectares) of land in a small village in the fertile Swat valley, but as Taliban fighters infiltrated his hometown, he left the cool mountains for the dusty government-run camp.
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