PAKISTAN: Tough times for returning IDPs
PESHAWAR, 9 December 2009 (IRIN) - Tens of thousands internally displaced persons (IDPs) from northwestern Pakistan who have returned home over the past few months are finding it difficult to resume their former lives, despite the fact that some aid is now reaching them, according to aid agencies.
IDPs in Lower Dir, Buner, Swat and Shangla Districts in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) are particularly affected.
More than two million people were displaced by fighting between government troops and Taliban insurgents in and around Swat Valley in May-June 2009 but many have been returning since July.
“Things are now quite calm and I have been based here since August with my family,” Khaled Hasan, a 40-year-old farmer from a village near Mingora in Swat Valley, told IRIN. “However, I lost all my potato and vegetable crops, most of my wheat crop and almost all my cows, so now it is a struggle to manage.”
Hasan is hoping to find work as a labourer or odd-job man in Peshawar, the provincial capital of NWFP, so he can save money to buy seeds, fertilizer and a cow.
“We just have one bull and a very old cow left. I used to have six animals. We need more so we can sell milk and also buy some poultry,” he said.
Like many others, Hasan returned from several months of displacement to find most of his animals gone - killed or possibly stolen.
However, female-headed households are faring worst. “My husband was killed in the fighting. My father-in-law died of a heart attack a month ago. Now I am alone with my three children who are all aged under 15 and my elderly mother-in-law,” said Farhat Bibi, 45, in Mingora.
“If I had a few goats or hens or bees I could manage, but there are none and I lack money to buy them. For now our neighbours help us,” she told IRIN.
Targeted aid
Several international agencies have been attempting to assist women-headed households or other vulnerable groups. In November, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) together with the Spanish Development Agency AECID, began identifying female-headed, landless and vulnerable beneficiaries for the distribution of poultry and fruit-bearing plants in Buner, Lower Dir, Shangla and Swat districts.
“We have four different projects running in these districts, which reach over 125,000 households. We distributed supplies for planting in both the winter and summer cropping season, and these included seeds and fertilizers for the households that most needed them, including those headed by women,” Jahangir Khan, FAO’s national programme manager, told IRIN.
The International Committee of the Red Cross and its local partner, the Pakistan Red Crescent Society, have also been conducting the first phase of an agricultural support programme in Buner and Dir designed to help 45,000 families resume farming in areas worst hit by the conflict.
Rural families are given seeds and fertilizer, as well as advice, to help them get back to normal. Altogether, 315,000 people should be self-reliant by harvest time in May 2010. In the meantime, ICRC will continue to provide food aid, and is planning to expand its programme into Swat in the coming months, according to a statement on 30 November.
“We received some wheat and some tools to plant it. These things are important to us because we have always farmed and can think of no other way to survive,” said Gulshan Khan, a farmer in Swat. He told IRIN his small plot had been “very badly damaged” in the fighting and it was “difficult to make it productive again”.
NWFP information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told IRIN: "We are doing all we can to help people in the conflict zone get back to normal life."
According to OCHA’s 27 November humanitarian update, Pakistan still has about 1.3 million IDPs; 1.66 million IDPs have returned to their places of origin, and there are about 110,000 in 11 camps.
kh/at/cb
Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict, (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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