PAKISTAN: Some IDPs heading home to save crops
PESHAWAR, 21 May 2009 (IRIN) - Whilst huge numbers of people are continuing to flee from Swat Valley and other conflict-hit areas in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a few are heading back in the other direction to tend to their crops.
“We just left our house and animals as they were and fled last week. But now we must try and get back and harvest the wheat crop which will rot in the fields if we don’t tend to it,” said Hazir Gul, 50, a farmer from a village near Ambala in Buner District.
“The wheat crop is the main source of livelihood for my family. It provides the ‘atta’ [wheat flour] we eat as well. I can’t afford to have it go to waste or my family will go hungry,” Gul told IRIN.
Adnan Khan, a spokesman for the NWFP government’s Emergency Response Unit, said: “Hundreds of families are now going back to Buner, and a few places in Swat.”
Rashid Khan, 30, and his family, currently living with relatives in Peshawar, are worried about the livestock they left behind in Swat. “We depend on our buffalo, goats and chickens for our living. Those animals could be lost or killed in the chaos, and I don’t know how I will feed my four children if this happens,” Khan told IRIN.
Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) “could exceed 2.5 million”, and Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Geneva, has said the number of those who have fled their homes since August 2008 “exceeds the two million mark”. The figure includes 1.45 million displaced since 2 May, when fresh fighting broke out between militants and government forces.
Rashid Khalikov, director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in New York, has described the situation as “one of the worst displacement crises”, while appealing for more funds.
Hopes and fears
Yahya Akhundzada, the District Coordination Officer of Buner District, said: “Much of Buner has been cleared and when it is all clear of militants we will ask people to return.” He hoped this would take “a matter of days”.
But in Swat and other areas the fighting could continue. The NWFP information minister has said his government wanted to “safely pull stranded people out of the conflict zone”. This would mean many could be displaced for an indefinite period.
“People here are desperately worried about the future, the fate of their houses and land. This is adding to their trauma,” Omar Hamid, a volunteer working at camps in Mardan (in NWFP), told IRIN by phone. Many of the families currently living in camps are desperately poor in the first place, and have no financial cushion.
“I lost my job as a kitchen assistant at a hotel in Mingora three years ago, due to the collapse of tourism in the area. Since then we have barely been able to make ends meet on an income of under Rs 3,000 a month [US$38] which I earn by selling eggs or doing occasional jobs in a shop. I don’t know how we will manage now,” said Amin Khan, now living in Peshawar.
Journalists who visited Daggar, the principal town of Buner District, have reported widespread destruction.
kh/cb
Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Economy, (IRIN) Food Security, (IRIN) Refugees/IDPs
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Copyright © IRIN 2009
This material comes to you via IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations or its Member States.
IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
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