Many of those displaced by the fighting are staying with host families, not in camps, and badly need food, money for rent, healthcare and clean water, aid agencies say
By Megan Rowling
LONDON (AlertNet) - Clashes among militant groups and an army operation to flush them out have uprooted nearly 48,000 people, including 22,000 children, from the Tirah Valley in Pakistan's northwestern Khyber agency in the past month, according to local government data.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in its latest update on the impact of the fighting, said the number of displaced is likely to "increase significantly" as aid agencies and government authorities verify who has fled and where.
Most are not living in camps but have sought shelter in Peshawar and other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province with host families, who have themselves been uprooted by earlier violence. Four to five families are crowding into each compound, the U.N. report said.
"Those hosting displaced families are already vulnerable, having adopted a number of negative coping mechanisms in order to live off-camp throughout their own displacement, and so it is a considerable added burden to have the newly displaced families living with them," it said.
Aid agencies are making it a priority to provide assistance to these families outside camps. Urgent needs include food and money for rent, healthcare and clean water.
"Many IDPs (internally displaced people) were severely injured while walking across mountains...and require urgent medical and psychosocial assistance," the report said. "Many families have no money, having paid exorbitant transportation costs. The families have left their livelihoods behind, and now have to pay high costs for rent."
Few have any means of earning a living, as the majority rely on livestock and farming to survive, the U.N. said.
"I was working as a daily labourer and living a very peaceful life, and suddenly everything changed. When we fled, we left everything behind and were only able to take a few clothes,” 26-year-old Hussain Shah told the Norwegian Refugee Council in late March.
TROUBLED REGION
Some 25 Pakistani soldiers and scores of militants have been killed in an operation mounted by the army a week ago with the aim of seizing control of the remote but strategic valley near the Afghan border, Pakistani military officials say.
In the weeks before the army began its push, hostilities had escalated between rival insurgent groups in the area. Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported on Sunday that recent clashes between the Ansarul Islam (AI) group and the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also supported by the Lashkar-i-Islam (LI), had killed many fighters on both sides, making it easier for security forces to launch a major offensive.
Aid agencies are distributing one month’s food rations and relief items to those who have fled the Maidan area of the valley, and are working out how much additional funding they will need to scale up their response.
The FATA Disaster Management Authority has also given some of the displaced hot meals, tents, healthcare, transport and other relief items.
The U.N. and its partners in Pakistan have already asked donors for $366 million to provide basic humanitarian aid to an estimated 978,000 displaced people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) this year, but have received only 17 percent of that so far. Insecurity has plagued the region for a decade, forcing hundreds of thousands to leave their homes, some of whom have returned.
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