Pakistani tribesmen become war refugees

PESHAWAR, Pakistan | Mohammed Khan is not sure who fired the mortar shell that nearly cost him his right arm.

But when he regained consciousness, the elderly farmer knew that clashes between the Pakistani military and local Taliban had degenerated into full-blown war and that it was time for his family to leave.

“The Taliban was making trouble for us. Then the military helicopters and bombs came, exploding throughout the day,” he said, showing how a neighbor’s crude stitchwork had saved his limb. “We were suffering from all sides.”

A 3-month-old Pakistani army offensive to expel Taliban and al Qaeda fighters based in Bajaur zone, a largely lawless tribal area that borders Afghanistan, has forced 200,000 Pakistani ethnic Pashtuns to flee their homes.

Droves have come to relief camps outside this frontier city for food, shelter and the assurance that the government’s writ still holds somewhere.

The Kacha Gari camp on the edge of Peshawar looks like the aftermath of a severe earthquake: Row after crumbling row of adobe hovels fill a dusty plain, ringed by an expanse of green plastic tents.

Until July, the site was home to 64,000 Afghan refugees. The government finally managed to repatriate most of them, and had emptied the area to make way for a development project.

Now it is swelling with Pakistanis.

As violence convulses the tribal areas, authorities and the United Nations refugee agency are directing the internally displaced to Kacha Gari and three other camps in the vicinity of Peshawar. At least 7,000 have poured in over the past month, with more families coming each day.

These people account for roughly 30 percent of those who have fled to Peshawar; the rest are staying with private hosts, said Sitara Imran, the minister for social welfare in North West Frontier Province.

“The people [at Kacha Gari] are the absolute poorest, with no place to go. They have no choice,” she said.

Bajaur, a rugged area about half the size of Rhode Island, is believed to be a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden. It serves as a militant entry point connecting the tribal areas with eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province, where U.S. forces have run up against fierce resistance.

Pressure has mounted from Washington to do more to stop the flow of fighters from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Now Pakistani forces are facing a similar battle as they try to defeat entrenched Taliban on their own soil.

Those who have fled say the Taliban were initially seen as defenders of Islam. Local sympathies surged when an October 2006 missile attack killed 82 people at a madrassa in the town of Damadola, 12 of them teenagers.

Although the Pakistani army claimed responsibility, most locals thought it was a U.S. drone.

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