Women who lost their menfok in terror attacks develop new skills to rebuild their lives. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Dec 27 2013 (IPS)

Farhat Bibi, 43, was left to fend for her three young sons after her husband was killed in a bomb attack in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) three years ago. A few days later, she landed at a camp for people displaced by violence. “The camp proved to be a blessing in disguise,” she says.

“It helped me learn skills and now I earn enough to buy clothes, food and fulfil the other needs of my children,” she recalls. She embroiders clothes and makes cushions, bags, wicker baskets, bracelets and other ornaments, earning around 150 dollars a month.

“I am also teaching these skills to other tribal women,” Farhat Bibi tells IPS.

The works of 100 displaced women like her were showcased at an exhibition here titled ‘Hunnarmande Guthey’ (skilful fingers). The colourful array of products on display belied the tragic past of the hands that made them.Most of the women displaced from Orakzai Agency due to military action have lost their men and desperately need help."

The show was organised by the NGO Centre of Excellence for Rural  Development (CERD) in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It presented handicrafts made by women from Kurram Agency in FATA who now live at the New Durrani Camp, home to 29,607 displaced families.

Violence has played out in FATA, bordering Afghanistan, ever since Taliban militants moved there after the fall of their government in Kabul in 2001. As a frontline ally of the U.S. in the war on terror, Pakistan has carried out military operations there.

CERD coordinator Kashif Islam, citing UNHCR statistics, says about two million people have been displaced from FATA. “Women constitute 50 percent of the displaced population. They need vocational training to empower them,” Islam tells IPS.

Caught in the conflict, many FATA residents have fled to the adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

“We have been imparting training to 200 women every month in Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Most of the women displaced from Orakzai Agency due to military action have lost their men and desperately need help,” Islam says.

He says women widowed by the conflict in FATA are the main beneficiaries of their UNHCR-sponsored endeavour. “We hold exhibitions every month to seek markets for these handicrafts which depict the skill and creativity of displaced FATA women,” he tells IPS.

Visitors to these shows are left marvelling at the creativity and grit of these women. Most of them are illiterate. Many of them were worried and depressed when they arrived at the camps, but they have learnt to look ahead.

Jamila Bibi, a 33-year-old woman from North Waziristan Agency, is one of them. She was devastated when her father was killed by a stray bullet. But the camp gave her courage.

She learnt embroidery, sewing and other skills and now supports her two sisters, a brother and a widowed mother. Sitting at a stall displaying her wicker baskets and trays, Jamila Bibi says had she not come to the camp, she would have been begging on the streets.

“I supply handicrafts to a nearby market. It has brought respectability to our lives as we are no longer dependent on charity and handouts by NGOs,” says Jamila Bibi.

Saeeda Gul, a CERD trainer, says the displaced women are trained before being provided raw materials.

“They come to three community centres near the camps where they learn to make things with wicker,” says Gul. “The women are very happy with their newly acquired skills because it helps them earn a living in a decent way,” she says.

Most of the women start from scratch, picking up the skills at the community centres.

Shukria Khan, a trainer, says “We just help them make the products in a more professional way and give them three months of training, besides raw materials.” The women are required to be at the community centre for four hours every day.

Khan says the women show a keen interest in fine-tuning their skills and making good quality handicrafts.

And the efforts don’t go unrewarded.

Aziz-ur-Rehman, a local businessman, says he displays the handicrafts at his showroom. “The items reflect the creativity and skills of tribal women and mostly manage to find buyers,” he tells IPS.

It is heartening to see that these women haven’t given up despite the harsh reality of their lives, he says. “The training has brought dignity to their lives. They are more empowered now.”

Buyers lap up these handicrafts because they are high on aesthetics and are inexpensive, he says. “Some items like handmade clothes also sell out fast.”

Kashmala Shah, a tribal woman from Kurram Agency who benefited from the programme, has now opened her own centre where she is training 30 women.

Shah says the displaced women now hope for a better future for themselves and their families. She tells IPS, “I lost my father and brother in the conflict but that doesn’t mean I should sit idle and wait for charity. It is a big opportunity and we are seizing it.”

Victims of a May 17 explosion at a mosque in a village in Malakand district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which killed 13 people. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 27 2013 (IPS)

Peshawar is breathing a little easier. Prime minister designate Nawaz Sharif’s offer of talks with the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has rekindled hope for peace in this Pakistan border town.

The TTP have had a long run of terror in Pakistan’s northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, of which Peshawar is the capital. And the terror had intensified in the run-up to the May 11 elections in the country, as bomb and suicide attacks left a bloody trail of political casualties in the region.

Tackling terrorism, therefore, would have been the foremost priority of any government that came to power. And when the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) emerged the winner, the mandate before it was clear.

Sharif’s statement that “talking to Taliban was not a bad option” has sent a wave of relief among the residents of KP, and of FATA in particular, which has borne the brunt of the militancy since 2001.

Especially as the TTP has responded favourably. Its spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan welcomed the offer and considered it a positive sign. “We are devising a strategy over the course of action to be taken in response to the peace talk offer,” he said.

Terrorism is the number one problem the new government needs to solve if it is to put Pakistan on the path to progress, PML-N activist Rehmanullah Khan told IPS. “We have lost 49,000 people, including 5,000 soldiers, to the Taliban since 2005,” he said.

Other parties too have endorsed this initiative. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), under the leadership of former cricket legend Imran Khan, had, in fact, been at the forefront of a campaign to hold a dialogue with the militants.

The party will now be forming a government in coalition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It has appointed Pervez Khan Khattak as the chief minister.

“We are according top priority to the establishment of peace and ending terrorism,” he told IPS. Without stopping terrorism, he said, there can be no prospect of social and economic development.

“The army has been engaged in a military operation in FATA since 2005,” Khattak added. “But the outcome has been zero and the TTP is still calling the shots in the majority of the seven tribal districts under FATA.”

If you have not been able to eliminate them by force in the last eight years, he said, talks would be your best option.

Regarding Sharif’s offer of the olive branch to the Taliban, Dr Said Akram at the political science department of the University of Peshawar told IPS that the Taliban had in March this year offered to talk with the government. “But the then government (led by the Pakistan People’s Party) did not show an interest, due to which no headway was made,” he said.

At that time, the TTP had also asked Nawaz Sharif, who was then in the opposition, as well as religious leaders like Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and Syed Munawar Hassan of the Jamaat-e-Islami, for guarantees before the dialogue.

“While in opposition, Nawaz didn’t become the guarantor, but now that he is in government and prime minister, it would be his first priority to start negotiations with the TTP,” said Akram.

Both the PML-N and PTI have also sought the help of Maulana Samiul Haq, chief of JUI’s other faction, and patron-in-chief of Pakistan’s biggest Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom Haqqania, to facilitate talks between the government and the TTP.

The influential cleric is referred to as the ‘Father of the Taliban’. “Most of the Taliban leaders are my students,” Haq told IPS. “I have been in contact with the Taliban leadership and the response has been positive.”

But he needed the full guarantee not only of the PML-N and PTI but also of Pakistan’s army chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, he said, before launching a formal dialogue process with the TTP.

“We are sure that peace will prevail if the government, opposition, army and the Taliban display sincerity,” he said.

Muhammad Aslam Khan, a Pakistan Studies teacher at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, 50 km northeast of Peshawar, says it’s the brightest chance for the government to rein in the TTP. “The government needs to take the peace offer seriously if it wants to have peace in the future,” he said.

In fact, the people had voted for the PML-N and PTI precisely because of the failure of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Awami League Party (ANP) to maintain peace, Khan added. They saw hope in the former’s slogans of peace and would be very disappointed if they too failed to contain terrorism.

However, even the ANP, which had been in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the last five years and on a collision course with the TTP, having lost 800 of its leaders and workers in sustained attacks by the group, is in favour of making peace with them. “We want peace at any cost and will support the government because people have become sick of terrorism,” ANP spokesman Zahid Khan told IPS. Peace, it would seem, finally has a chance in Pakistan.

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Dec 28 2012 (IPS)

As the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approaches, Pakistan must reckon with its patchy progress on maternal and child health.

About 20,000 women die due to pregnancy-related complications in Pakistan every year, while 3.2 million children under five years of age die of diarrhoea and pneumonia every year, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Six hundred Pakistani children per 100,000 live births die before reaching their fifth birthday. Diarrhoea and pneumonia account for 76 of those deaths per 100.000 live births, or 11 percent and 13 percent of childhood deaths in Pakistan, respectively.

What’s more, the polio virus continues to plague Pakistan — particularly the northern provinces, which face the added burden of the Taliban’s militancy.

With no money to see a doctor, Gul Lakhta,50, had resigned himself to blindness when a ‘mobile hospital’ drove into his village in the Bajaur Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), on Pakistan’s rugged border with Afghanistan.

“They operated on me the same day. Now, my eyesight is excellent,” says Lakhta, a beneficiary of the Mobile Hospital Programme (MHP) started by the government in 2003 to provide healthcare to people in the war-torn areas of northern Pakistan.

After the United States-led coalition forces toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001 its leaders fled across the border to the FATA and adjacent areas, bringing with them their fundamentalist ideology and culture of violence.

Before long, the Taliban had unleashed a campaign of bombings against their hosts, targeting schools, health facilities, markets, government buildings and forces, bringing life to a virtual standstill in the seven agencies that make up the FATA.

“In the process, Taliban militants also destroyed 60 health facilities, forcing patients to travel to Peshawar and beyond to seek treatment for even minor ailments,” said Dr Niaz Afridi, head of the MHP in the FATA.

The government allocates Pakistani rupees 60 million (660,000 dollars) per year for the programme and there are plans to expand it, Afridi said.

These clinics-on-wheels have proved a blessing for the patients because they are well-equipped and manned by dedicated teams. Currently they provide treatment to 90,000 patients annually.

“We also organise medical camps in areas which are inaccessible by the regular medical workers and our medical teams visit the remotest areas to reach the patients and provide diagnosis and treatment free,” Afridi said.

Dr Nauman Mujahid, development officer for health services in the FATA, said the MHP is manned by a staff of 150, including physicians, surgeons, gynaecologists and other specialists like ophthalmologists and dentists.

Each vehicle is equipped with a generator that powers a mobile operation theatre, a dental unit, x-ray and ultrasound machines and laboratories that allow for quick diagnostics.

“Critically-ill patients who require hospitalisation are referred to tertiary care centres in Peshawar,” said Mujahid.

The programme started with the South Korean government donating 14 mobile clinic units in 2003 to help the people in the insurgency-hit areas of the FATA.

Although the process of the rebuilding damaged health outlets is in progress, the MHP will, because of its popularity, continue to operate in the FATA with a fleet that was augmented in 2010 by the government.

Mobile hospitals are particularly effective in ensuring that patients who need to be on drug regimens lasting several months get their doses. This is especially so in the case of tuberculosis (TB) patients who, if improperly treated, can develop drug resistant strains that can endanger a community.

Waqar Ali, 46, who was diagnosed with TB at a free medical camp in North Waziristan three months ago, is now on medication he must take for eight months. “I am feeling better and do my farming like normal people,” he told IPS.

Authorities take care to notify people in areas where the camps are going to be held about a week in advance. Often announcements are made from the mosques.

Talking to IPS, Dr Bilqees Qayyum, a gynaecologist on the rolls of the MHP, says that people often come to the medical camps in droves with a variety of complaints.

“Besides running camps to treat patients routinely, we also rush to the areas hit by outbreaks of diseases, like measles, gastroenteritis and diarrhoea,” she said. “We were the first to reach the Hazara division in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) when it was hit by a massive earthquake in 2005.”

The MHP played a significant role in providing medical assistance to people displaced by military operations directed against the Taliban in Swat in 2009.

In the following year, MHP proved its mettle by providing emergency medical services to people affected by floods in the Nowshera and Charsadda districts of KP.

“Our highly trained doctors, paramedics and nurses have been awarded commendation certificates by government for their excellent performance in emergencies,” Qayyum said.

In 2011 MHP surgeons carried out operations on 13,000 patients and the numbers continue to grow, Dr Fawad Khan, director of health services in the FATA, told IPS.

“Given the success of the MHP, the KP and Punjab (provincial) governments have requested us to put in place a similar programme for them,” Khan said. “Our teams already visit these provinces in emergencies,” he added.

(END)