Thousands Stuck In Camps of No Return

Timergara, Pakistan - Bewildered, angry and thrown into squalor, the refugees created suddenly by Pakistan's frontline role in the 'war on terror' know they could be stranded in camps for years to come.

[An Afghan girl in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. (Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP)]An Afghan girl in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. (Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP)
Up to 300,000 people have had to flee fighting in Bajaur, an extremely poor part of Pakistan's tribal border area with Afghanistan. Refugees in their own country, they live in vast government camps or beg shelter from friends and family. In an ominous sign for the government, their rage is directed not at the Pakistani Taliban, who took over their area, but the army, whose onslaught with jets and helicopters forced them to abandon their homes and livelihoods.

Packed together in tented cities, these deeply conservative Islamic refugees have had to drop the strict purdah that the women observed at home. Large families - of eight or sometimes 12 - live together in single, draughty tents. They are all preparing for a bitter winter.

At the sprawling Kungi camp, set on a hill just outside the town of Timergara, the only toilet is a communal ditch over which the men squat. The women use the surrounding woods.

'We get little food. We don't have enough water to drink, let alone the chance to bathe,' said Gul Mohammad, 25, who arrived at Kungi with seven family members. 'We brought nothing. We just came here to save our lives.'

There is no electricity. Water is trucked in and food is distributed by the government and aid agencies, but supplies are very short. Inhabitants spend much of their day foraging for wood as cooking fuel, or buy it with the little money they have.

There are at least eight similar camps scattered across the North West Frontier Province, which adjoins Bajaur. Already there are outbreaks of disease, with acute diarrhoea and respiratory illnesses being treated by medical aid workers. There are 30,000 people living in official camps and there are contingencies being prepared by the United Nations to accommodate 100,000, as people continue to flood out of Bajaur. Soon Bajaur will be virtually empty. The UN believes that a further 200,000 will be put up in houses by 'host families', often relatives.

The Pakistani government has had to scramble to set up camps for these 'internally displaced people' as a result of the military assault in Bajaur, now into its third month. Aid agencies and the UN have rushed to provide support. At first it was thought the army would finish the job within a month, but with no signs of the operation ending these camps are being given more permanent facilities.

There are fears that the sites could be infiltrated by Taliban militants, whose wives and children are already living there. When one Western aid worker asked a group of women at prayer who they were praying for, back came the reply: 'Our men fighting the army.'

Pakistan's security forces are engaged in a fitful war with Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists who largely control the country's tribal border with Afghanistan.

The Bajaur operation appears to be Pakistan's most determined attack on its home-grown extremists since 9/11. So far there is little action in other parts of the tribal belt. Should Pakistan finally decide that war is the only way to deal with the extremists, the fate of the people of Bajaur could be replicated across the tribal area, home to around three million people.

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