Swat Valley Refugees Returning To Scene Of The Crime
Jul 13, 2009 1 Comment ›› Erik Wong
Thousands of people began returning to Pakistan’s Swat Valley after nearly three months of fighting that drove the Taliban from the region and created the country’s worst refugee crisis in six decades.
Pakistan earned praise at home and abroad for its offensive in Swat, which began in late April after the collapse of a peace deal that had handed the valley just 100 miles north of Islamabad, the capital, to militants.
Under the protection of soldiers and helicopter gunships, refugees started coming back Monday. How Pakistan manages the return of the nearly two million people who fled the fighting will go a long way to determining whether it can solidify the army’s gains in the strategic valley as it moves to retake even more formidable Taliban strongholds in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
In a reminder that the threat facing Pakistan has spread far beyond northwestern regions such as Swat and the tribal areas, an explosion Monday in the country’s east killed at least nine people.
The midmorning blast in a farming village near Mian Channu, in Punjab province, appeared to have been caused by explosives stored in the house of a teacher who had set up a small religious school, said Kamran Khan, a police official.
He couldn’t say why explosives were in the house, but two senior Punjab police officials said there was evidence the building was used as a meeting place for Islamist militants, who in recent months have stepped up attacks in previously peaceful parts of eastern Pakistan.
In Swat, officials have carefully planned the refugees’ return, many observers say. Pakistani and international aid officials say they have mapped out how the government would ensure the orderly — and voluntary — return of residents to the valley and surrounding areas, where police and local government are nearly nonexistent, schools and clinics remain shuttered, and many houses were destroyed or damaged in the fighting.
Before the official reopening of the valley Monday, those officials said that they expected a trickle to head home in the first few days, and that the entire effort would take weeks or longer.
On Monday, thousands of people packed into cars, buses and trucks and waited through much of the day at checkpoints on the edge of Swat for the army to lift the curfew and begin letting people go home.
Most were among the valley’s better-off residents who could afford to pay their way home, after waiting out the fighting at the homes of friends and relatives in safer areas.
“We hope the Taliban will never come back” said Sangeen Khan, an electrician in his thirties. He said he heard that his house in the town of Bandai had been damaged. Still, “it is a great feeling to be able to go back home,” he said.
At the refugee camps, by contrast, many resisted returning. The government arranged for buses to carry people from several camps, which at the height of the crisis housed a small fraction of the displaced, most of them poor. On Monday, only a few hundred people were willing to go, according to witnesses and local media reports.
Some people in the camps expressed fears about a Taliban re-emergence, with many of the Swat Taliban’s top commanders still at large. Others said they were waiting for food, supplies and the nearly $310 in cash the government promised every family.
“I am not sure about the situation there,” said Mohammed Darvesh, a farmer who has been living in a camp in the town of Charsadda with his wife and five children.
Only 20 families left the camp Monday, about half as many as authorities had planned, an official at the camp said.
