Her name was Sahin and in a matter of hours her world had been broken. As fighting raged in their hometown of Mingora — fighter jets screaming overhead and mortar fire pounding — she and her husband tried to escape with their 10 children. Amid the chaos, her husband was killed by an artillery shell. There was hardly time to bury him in the courtyard of a neighbor’s house before Sahin was forced to think of the children and of somehow leading them to safety by herself. They walked for “hours and hours” before, in a neighboring town, they found a bus. That bus brought them to a camp for the displaced, a place for the beleaguered, for those with nowhere else to go.
Now huddled with her six girls and four sons — three of whom are disabled — Sahin, in her early 50s, can barely think of the future. “Even if the conflict stops we cannot go back as the house has been destroyed,” she said. Her family has barely more than the clothes they were wearing when they fled.
Across a 50-mile swathe of northwest Pakistan, countless stories similar to Sahin’s could be told. Pakistan’s military has mounted what appears to be a major operation against Taleban fighters who have seized control of several districts little more than 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad. “This is not a normal war. This is a guerrilla war,” Pakistan’s prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani said yesterday. “This is our own war. This is war for the survival of the country.” The army said 55 militants were killed in clashes around Swat yesterday.
Aid groups have warned of a human tide of up to 500,000 people fleeing their homes. The UN said an estimated 200,000 have fled the Swat Valley and its main town, Mingora, in the past few days alone, while another 300,000 are poised to flee if they get the chance. This would create a total of one million people forced from their homes by fighting in the past 12 months. It represents the biggest internal displacement of people in Pakistan since independence more than 60 years ago.
“People are in shock. In some cases their homes have been destroyed by mortar shells. They are wondering when they’ll be able to go back. Others say they will not be able to go back,” said Antonia Paradela, an official with UNICEF who interviewed Sahin and other refugees in the Sheikh Shehzad refugee camp near Mardan, a city in the south of the Swat Valley. “This is the place where the families are coming. They are tired, sweaty, dusty. There are whole families crying because they have lost someone. But there is also a sense of relief to be out of the danger.”
Under mounting international pressure, the government of Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistan’s military launched this week’s operation to drive the Taleban from the former tourist destination of Swat after a controversial, three-month cease-fire with the militants fell apart. After a previous military effort failed to dislodge the militants who had extended their violent influence throughout the valley over a two year period, the government in February signed a peace deal which included an agreement to establish Shariah courts in Swat and some neighboring areas.
The Taleban, however, failed to meet its end of the agreement and lay down its arms. Indeed, emboldened by the government’s acquiescence, the militants then spread from Swat into the neighboring and strategically important Buner Valley. The army is also battling to drive the Taleban from Buner and nearby Lower Dir.
While journalists are, in effect, prevented from reaching the war zone, the military’s operation — which involves more than 5,000 troops pitched against an estimated 5,000 Taleban fighters — appears unexpectedly firm, and officials said that 140 militants had already been killed in the past two days. Some observers had wondered whether the army, trained and prepared to fight a conventional war against India, had the will or the capability to take on a well-trained guerrilla enemy.
There was also speculation whether, in the week that Barack Obama outlined his new “Af-Pak” strategy to Zardari and the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, in Washington, there may have been a reluctance to fight what could have been seen as another battle in America’s war. The Obama administration’s policy of using missiles fired from unmanned drones at suspected militant targets and the subsequent civilian “collateral damage” this causes is hugely unpopular in Pakistan. Yet this time, several things appear different. From the start, the battle for Swat has been pitched as a battle for the future of the Pakistan — and one that has been directed by the Pakistani authorities rather than Americans.
The seemingly widespread support for this operation, as opposed to Washington’s drone strikes, appears based in large part on growing public dismay with the Taleban. With the Taleban having embarked on a policy of burning girls’ schools and beheading their opponents, only to be “rewarded” with a deal that saw Shariah law enacted, the Pakistani public is growing more anxious as the militants’ threat has increased rather than reduced.
Those involved in brokering the cease-fire say the Taleban have now exposed their true colors and must be dealt with by force.
