By IPS Correspondents
UPPER DIR, Pakistan, Aug 14 2008 (IPS)

"We have been staying in this camp for two days. My daughter is still in Loi Sam which we left due to heavy shelling by the army," says Gul Pari, who fled the fighting in volatile Bajaur Agency, a tribal area on Pakistan’s northern border.

This family is among the lucky ones to flee Bajaur in a truck. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Tens of thousands have escaped from Bajaur to neighbouring Upper Dir, a district in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP).

"When we left my eight-year-old daughter, Gul Zari, had severe abdominal pain, due to which she stayed back with her grandmother," says a very anxious woman who is staying at a relief camp in Upper Dir set up by the ruling Awami National Party (ANP).

"About 12,000 families have left Bajaur Agency, which has a total population of 900,000 persons," says Anwarullah Khan, correspondent of Pakistan’s largest newspaper Dawn. Khan, who also fled to Upper Dir on Tuesday, said blanket aerial and artillery bombardment over the last five days has killed about 20 civilians in Loi Sam, Banda Rashakai, Sadiqabad, Inayat Killey, Tang Khata and Charmang villages.

"People have been migrating not only to Lower and Upper Dir, but also to Peshawar, Mardan, and Charsadda," says NWFP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain.

The organisers of the Al Khidmat (service) camp established by the Jamaat Islami party in Upper Dir say they have registered 50,000 internally displaced persons. "We provide meals, medicines and other necessities of life to these people," says Sirajul Haq, a former NWFP minister and provincial chief of Jamaat Islami.

"I lost my two teenaged sons due to bombing by the military in Loi Sam," a distraught parent, Abdul Rehman cries. "Our relatives would have buried them," he adds. A schoolteacher, he says he left because his wife was asthmatic and she needed treatment that was not available in Bajaur.

Asked if he would go back to his village in Bajaur Agency once the situation improves, he says: "I wouldn’t go back there."

The recent clashes erupted when Pakistan Taliban besieged about 200 soldiers trying to enter Loi Sam area on Aug. 8. Militants occupied Loi Sam, Bajaur’s trade centre, 10 months ago.

The army began heavy bombardment on Aug. 9. Dead bodies and burnt remains of vehicles litter the area some 12 km from Khat, the headquarters of Bajaur.

Air force planes and Cobra helicopters bombed Loi Sam and other areas of Bajaur so heavily that thousands of people were forced to leave their homes for safe places.

Mardan Nazim Himayatullah Mayar told IPS they were planning to camp in the city along with about 150 families, who arrived there from Bajaur on Aug. 12. The International Committee of the Red Cross is helping us set up the camp, he says.

Lawlessness in the border areas has intensified with the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Hundreds of Taliban fighters and al Qaeda had crossed the porous border into Pakistan in the wake of the Taliban’s ouster from Kabul by U.S.-led foreign troops in end-2001.

The U.S., which has declared a global ‘war on terror’, has put pressure on Pakistan to flush out militants from its border areas.

As a result of the military action, the number of internally displaced in Pakistan has shot up with mass exoduses last year from South and North Waziristan in FATA.

Families from villages in Swat and Darra Adamkhel in NWFP are still living in the provincial capital, Peshawar.

Five-year-old Naseema in the ANP-managed camp misses her mother, who is bed ridden because of paraplegia and cannot leave their home in Inayat Killey. Her father, Naeem Ali, is consoling his daughter and trying to make her sleep in his lap.

Some refugees are staying with relatives in Peshawar. "We arrived here just today (Tuesday). We are with our uncle," says Raziq Wali, a grade 10 student. He says his uncle’s house is very tiny, but they have no place else to go.

Security forces used jet fighters, gunship helicopters and heavy artillery for four days to end the siege of the pro-Taliban militants around Khar.

Jamila Bibi of Charmang locality, presently living with her nephew in Peshawar, cannot get over the loss of her 11-year-old son Jamil. "Jamil was playing outside the house when a bomb hit him and we found his body scattered all over the place," she told IPS. "May god destroy both the Taliban and the army, who are responsible for the death of my son," she curses.

"More than 400 families have arrived in Peshawar. They are looking for rented houses, but due to sky-high rents, they cannot afford houses here," says Sadaqat Khan, president of the Peshawar Property Dealers Association.

"We walked on foot for hours along with the women and children. We couldn’t find a vehicle that would take us," complains Abdul Jabbar, a vegetable seller in Loi Sam. Jabbar says his three children have nightmares of the bombing, and cry in their sleep.

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