For more than a decade, we as a nation have stood derided of peace and tranquility. The whole nation was held hostage by a handful of terrorists who played havoc with the blood of the innocent people, sadly, in the name of shariah of their own brand. The writ of the state was being challenged. The educational institutions, busy bazaars (markets), the airport and the military establishments were being targeted indiscriminately. Even the mosques, imambargahs, churches and other places of worship were not spared; they were attacked with gun fires, rockets and bombs killing thousands of innocent civilians, brave servicemen and political leaders and rendering thousands of women widows and children orphans.
All efforts aimed at overcoming the terrain of terrorism ended in futility because of uncompromising and intransigent attitude of the militants. It was in this backdrop that "Operation Zarb-e-Azb," named after the sword of the Holy Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH), was launched by the armed forces of Pakistan on June 15, 2014.
The operation is well poised to succeed in stamping out the militants and wiping out their bases in North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan and regaining full control thereof. The operation has been lent strength to by the US drone strikes resumed in June after a hiatus of six months. The army claims to have killed over 450 militants, destroyed 88 hideouts, and seized their underground tunnels (used to smuggle militants and weapons out of the view of hovering drones) and plants and factories (piled high with hundreds of metal cylinders and other containers used to make bombs) and after almost a month of air strikes and ground offensives cleared Miranshah, the capital city of North Waziristan (NWA) which had been under effective control of the militants for years.
A significant feature of operation "Zarb-e-Azb" is that it enjoys the whole-hearted support of the entire nation and is continuing successfully in order to clear the entire area of the militants. The operation is, however, still in initial stages and it is premature to say when the army might wrap it up. "The challenges we are facing are huge and we are deliberately being very slow. Our goal is to establish the writ of the state and to never let these terrorists ever come back here again," ISPR DG, General Asim Bajwa, told the journalists who were taken on a rare trip to Miranshah to show how tightly the Taliban had held the frontier town in its grip.
In the aftermath of this operation hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), mostly women and children, poured out of North Waziristan and sought refuge in safer areas like Bannu, Peshawar and Kohat. Quite a number of families moved further afield to the towns of Lakki Marwat, Karak and Dera Ismail Khan. In its recent update, the Fata Disaster Management Authority (FDMA) has reported registering 981,104 persons (84,781 families) comprising 254,141 males, 281,829 females and 445,134 children. The actual number of the IDPs is, however, reported to have crossed over one million mark with majority of them having scattered across various parts of Northern Pakistan living in inhuman conditions and posing a serious challenge to the humanitarian and relief efforts being made by the government, the armed forces and the civil society.
Internally displaced persons are among the world's most vulnerable people inviting time and attention to get them out of the morass. The crisis has global dimensions and as such the task of rescuing, resettling, reconstructing and rehabilitating them poses a formidable challenge to be reckoned with, especially in countries like Pakistan where the fragile civilian government and its various institutions lack capacity and the means to provide sufficient food, shelter, health and sanitation; resources enough to indefinitely sustain an exodus and to create peace in the areas they left so that they can migrate back to their motherland.
Millions of people are internally displaced from time to time in different parts of the world, Pakistan being no exception, because of war, infighting or natural calamities. The United Nation's High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in its Annual Global Trends Report, released in 2013, revealed that, as of the end of 2012, more than 45.2 million people were in situations of displacement. With the recent intensified war in Syria, escalated conflicts and violence in Central African Republic, South Sudan and Myanmar last year and natural or man-made disasters in several other countries, the number of IDPs globally is now much higher than in previous years. More recent reports suggest that the number of IDPs due to war or persecution around the world has exceeded 50 million mark for the first time since the World War II.
In Pakistan, what started as a mass exodus of the population from the tribal areas of FATA as the military pounded the terrorists' hideouts in North Waziristan, has fast accelerated into a humanitarian crisis with the IDPs exposed to extremely vulnerable situations mainly due to lack of prior arrangements to handle the issue.
The military onslaught against the militants was not a bolt from the blue; it had long been expected following the predicted breakdown of peace negotiations with the Taliban. That Pakistan's army was likely to unleash a military onslaught against Taliban's safe havens near the Afghan border has been an open secret for months. Therefore, the government should have been well prepared for every eventuality, and the IDP management should have been the best managed and most thoroughly planned of all. The operation in North Waziristan, the epicenter of terrorism, was delayed due to lack of unanimity of views on the subject. Regrettably, despite the delay, no concrete planning seems were made for relief and rehabilitation of the families who were likely to be affected by the army action. What has been seen instead is the reported miserable conditions the IDPs are living in, facing the vagaries of life after fleeing fighting in North Waziristan.
There was little infrastructure that should have been developed for IDPs who also complain of being charged extraordinarily high rent for basic shelter and the government's apparent failure to provide the promised financial assistance. There have been reports that the homeless tribesmen had to wait for hours in long queues at food distribution points for a couple of days only to be turned away without ration each time.
It is not surprising, therefore, that of over-a-million IDPs, having fled the military offensive in North Waziristan, only a small number has reportedly chosen to take the government's offer to house them at the Bakkakhel camp; most have gone to Bannu where they are either renting shelter at exorbitant rates -at twice or three times the regular rate- or staying with relatives or other IDPs. Many have sought refuge in government schools and colleges. The IDPs' refusal to stay in camps has more to do with the government obliviousness to local customs and traditions that do not allow women and children to stay in camps where there were no firm divisions to segregate them from outsiders.
Judging either from the point of view of morality or state responsibility or even just operational common sense, the NWA IDPs need to be looked after well. The Federal and Provincial governments claim to have released funds and are taking measures for relief and rehabilitation of the IDPs. Financial aid is also pouring in from other sources within and outside Pakistan including UAE that has promised 2.5 billion rupees. Yet, according to reports, the relief so far provided leaves much to be desired. The food shortages and other ordeals the IDPs are reported to be going through have sharpened anger towards the government which is not a good omen.
Shockingly, around 100,000 IDPs are reported to have crossed into the eastern Afghan provinces of Khost and Paktika rather than Pakistan; traditionally the flow of refugees has been the other way (millions of Afghans fled to Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and the civil war of the 1990s, and around 2.5 million have still not returned to Afghanistan).(ISPR claims that these IDPs have returned home from Afghanistan).
Now that the military operation is on its way to success, efforts should be made to win their hearts through effective relief and rehabilitation measures lest they should become despondent and become an easy prey to anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan elements who could fan parochialism and incite insurgency in the country. It is high time when the Federal and Provincial governments should shun their differences and come forward and extend wholehearted support to the IDPs.
The ongoing military operation is a turning point in the war against terrorism. Once it is complete, the greatest challenge would be the rehabilitation and return of the displaced population to their homes. For Pakistan, this should not be a task impossible to achieve as the country has had an earlier experience thereof; the way Pakistan handled the Swat IDP crisis is hailed as an international success story. The government should do all to allay the sufferings of IDPs and make their lives as comfortable as possible. Efforts should be made to win the hearts and minds of the IDPs. Unless this is done, the IDPs could become an easy target of the militants. And, God forbid, if it so happens, the very purpose of the army action against the militants would stand defeated.
(The writer is Ex-Director, Institute of Bankers Pakistan, Ex-Advisor, Training & Media, Sindh Bank, and Ex-Editor, Value Chain, a business
magazine.)
Comments
Comments are closed.