Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Several international aid agencies working with internally displaced people (IDPs) in northwest Pakistan have called for a more rapid deployment of funds in order to help the estimated 2.4 million (IDPs) who fled fighting in the Swat valley in May 2009, even as more arrive daily from the conflict areas. Most of the IDPs have found shelter not in camps but with friends and family. This hospitality is now being sorely tested as more and more families are arriving at camps, says the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees).
The Pakistani army has announced that it will advance against militants in Waziristan, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), bordering Afghanistan. A spokesperson in the UNHCR office in Peshawar told GenevaLunch that the conflict there could further increase the flow of IDPS. They are preparing for 200,000 more people.
On the other side of the border in Afghanistan, a beefed-up US military is similarly preparing to attack Taliban and Al Qaeda strongholds, says the BBC.
As the Pakistan army has regained control of Mingora and other areas of the Swat valley taken from the Taliban in fierce fighting over the past six weeks, a few families have attempted to return to their homes there, according to the UNHCR. But these few have returned because the area is thoroughly devastated, an ICRC (International Red Cross) evaluation team says. Electricity and phone lines are down, food and medical supplies are short, and no shops are open. A major reconstruction effort would have to be undertaken in the area of Mingora and surrounding villages before repatriation could take place.
The ICRC has been operating in Swat again since 3 June.
The destruction of the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar 9 June was the latest in a series of bomb attacks in which Pakistani Taliban militants appear to be taking the war to the rest of the country. At the end of May, a bomb reduced a police emergency response headquarters to rubble in Lahore, south of the capital Islamabad.
Related:BBC
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News story, GenevaLunch, 12 June 2009.
Filed under: International organizations
Tags: Afghanistan, FATA, ICRC, military operations, NWFP, Pakistan, Pearl Continental Hotel, Red Cross, Swat Valley, UNHCR, war, Waziristan