The Plight of Internally Displaced Pakistanis in Swat

To counter insurgents, Pakistan Army launched its latest offensive in May 2009 after the Taliban had gained control of large parts of Swat valley. Due to intense fight, more than 2.4 million people have been displaced in Pakistan's Swat valley and its neighboring districts of Dir and Buner. This is the fastest and largest displacement of people since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis have left their homes and have taken shelter in neighboring districts. Thousands of new IDPs are arriving every hour (85,000 per day) at registration sites in safer areas of the NWFP (mostly Mardan and Swabi districts) and hundreds of spontaneous settlements have sprung up in sites such as schools, colleges, stadiums and parks.

The vast majority of the IDPs, are living outside of camps with host families or in rented accommodation, putting tremendous social and economic hardships on hosts. They have been experiencing soaring summer temperatures while facing a scarcity of water. These conditions have made the IDPs especially vulnerable to dehydration, diarrhea and skin infections.

Most IDPs are in urgent need of food, medical care and hygiene kits. There are 70,000 pregnant women among the 2.4 million internally displaced persons, who urgently need medical assistance.

The speed and scale of the displacement crisis in Pakistan is posing a huge challenge for the government and humanitarian organizations who are warning that the number of IDPs is unlikely to stabilize as long as the fighting continues.

Out of the 2.4 million, more than 1.7 million have arrived in neighboring Mardan and Swabi Districts. Out of the 1.7 million only 50,000 are living in the 9 camps in these two districts. The government has announced summer vacation in schools 15 days ahead of schedule to allow IDPs to settle there. The rest of the 1.65 million are living in villages in schools, with host families, with relatives, and by paying rent. The families living in schools haven’t received any aid from any government or private organization to date.

We were the very first ones to provide relief at most of the places we have visited. IDPs have to live in cramped spaces (1 tent per family) but they are getting cooked food, water, electricity, light, fans etc. Many NGO’s have set up their facilities in camps providing medical attention, ambulances, food, schooling, sanitation and orphanages.

Those who have been neglected are mostly living in villages. Since May, the population of most villages have doubled from the arrival of IDPs.

We visited families who had arrived and settled there for 2-3 weeks and were not very far from the camps, yet no aid has been offered to them. They are registered with the NWFP government and UNHCR but even after continuously visiting the camps for 10 days and waiting from morning till evening they are turned down due to huge numbers of people waiting before them.

Some people have borrowed flour and other food stuff for basic meals but do not have stoves and utensils to cook them.
The average family size is around 8 persons.

We met some families consisting of 36 people living in the same room! Another friend saw 10 families living in a rented house with only 3 rooms!

Note that the figures for Mardan/Swabi are official and are as of 18th May, 2009. The number of IDPs since then has significantly increased.

Fund Raising Efforts- How it All Started

We have been able to raise ~ US$ 36,250 (PKR 2.9 M); out of which US$ 27,500 (PRK 2.2 M) have already been used to give necessary food items and goods to 2200+ families.
A team comprised of GIKI, NUST and Punjab University graduates working as professionals for Telenor, LCC, Unilever, and PTCL. On a Friday (16th May, 2009) when we decided the least we can do is raise funds from our colleagues.

We raised money for one whole week, at the same time meeting every other day, talking to local social workers every night to identify the items of immediate requirement.
We raised cash from our families, friends, and colleagues and asked them to spread the word.

People in Pakistan can and want to donate but are skeptical because they are not sure if their money is reaching the affected people.

Our strength was winning the trust of people we know to buy the goods ourselves, transport and deliver them personally. The result was an overwhelming response with a little more than 1 million rupees raised in a week. Meanwhile we contacted our friends who owned rice/sugar/flour mills and persuaded them to provide tons of items on subsidized rates.

Our aim was to reach as many families as possible with the funds we had raised. As soon as all of this was arranged, we took leaves from our work and moved to Mardan.

Four Day Trip to Mardan District

An advance party of two volunteers went to Mardan on 15th May 2009 to liaison with local social workers and survey the IDP camps and other dwellings to get an idea of where to distribute.

The villages around Mardan-Malakand road were chosen because people living there had not received any relief goods for two weeks. The advance party placed an urgent order of cooking utensils in the evening and these things were procured from Rawalpindi by midnight.

We chose a village ‘Maday Baba’ as our base camp due to ease in offloading and storing the goods at one place.All 3 trucks with flour, rice and other items were moved from different locations on Friday morning and were offloaded around noon 16th May.

For day one we already had identified clusters of schools in nearby villages. Right away with local help, we hired tractor trolleys from the village. The modus operandi was to do the inventory of the available goods, identify the group of schools/villages, note the estimated no. of families living per school and load the trolleys accordingly.
One volunteer local social worker (usually a school teacher) would accompany our team on a trolley and guide us to the settlements. We would go inside to identify the authenticity of the affected families and verify that they have had no recent help (with limited stock, we were treating those who had nothing on priority).

Since we had the estimated number of families per school, we would ask the head of the family to come forward, tick off his name from the list and hand over the goods. This went on for the next 2 days with two or three teams moving simultaneously.

We covered villages at distances ranging from 3km to 30km. For some far off places, due to nonexistent paved roads (none available in villages) we used pick-up trucks or even Suzuki vans (low cargo capacity).

Each night after updating the inventory, we would either return to GIKI in Topi (Swabi District) or Islamabad.
On the second last day we had identified many families who now had food to cook but no stoves to cook it on. So on the last day we bought 130 small stoves with the money we had left and distributed those also through signed tokens.

We worked hard to buy things at the lowest rate (with acceptable quality) to ensure more families benefited. We fought with the transport drivers to charge reasonable rates. We dealt firmly with social workers to help us, but delivered personally to whoever we wanted and actually verified families through interviews, physical inspection of premises etc to make sure we were helping those most in need.



Difficulties:

The difficulties faced were nothing we couldn’t deal with. Just for the help of future volunteers:
1. Truck Drivers – The truck drivers were not much help when it came to making at the spot changes in plans (involving detours of a few insignificant kilometers). First getting them to get to Mardan on time is difficult, and then when asking them for some inevitable stop or a small route extension they start bickering even when we offer them more money. Once they agree to charge extra money they tried to fleece us. Anyway with the help of local volunteers, we were able to more or less agree on workable terms.
So if you are delivering goods yourself, agree on explicit terms, warning of possible changes in time, distance in advance.

2. Fake IDPs – Once you reach a village, many people other than those living in schools start claiming they are IDPs from Swat. Many people born in Swat are living and working in Mardan for many years. Most of them are no doubt poor villagers but our focus is helping those who have left everything behind.

The way around this problem is to take help of locals to identify them and check whether their temporary and permanent address on the NIC is the same.
Both of these experiences in no way reflect the general attitude of people we have interacted with.

Positive Experiences:

All locals were very helpful and obliging. They were very happy that out of town volunteers have come all the way and want to distribute directly.

All IDPs were very calm and polite. There was no incident of angry mobs attacking the trucks etc (though to be on the safe side in this situation it is always better to involve local volunteers).

Even travelling through Malakand/Mardan/Swabi Districts and Islamabad at night we did not face any security threat.

There were no roadblocks of any kind.

Overall attitude of locals was very friendly and there was no feeling of insecurity or alienation.
What needs to be done?


The United Nations says current funding is not ‘remotely significant’ to sustain IDPs. WFP says they currently have food to serve IDPs in the month of June 2009 only. Unless the foreign commitments are acted upon immediately, UN and the Pakistani government will be unable to provide for the IDPs beyond the month of June. Although we are actively raising funds for Round 3, individual efforts only, like ours, are not sufficient for this huge crisis.

We raised approximately US$ 36,250 (PKR 2.9 M); in just few weeks and helping out ~22,000 needy families seems remarkable on personal level but we ourselves feel it is insignificant.

Even if we raise the same amount and go there multiple times it won’t solve the problem! We all need to create awareness and motivate others to help for this cause. We need to push the government to do more about the neglected people living in villages.

We need to ask corporations to donate money to UNCHR or to aid organizations. We need to create awareness using our media contacts. We need to appeal to our friends all over the world to donate generously.

Ways you can help:

Create Awareness

Tell these facts to everyone you know. Involve the Media.
Try to influence the media to stop focusing on the camps only and visit these people too and share their plight with the world. Influence the Government, NGOs and Corporate world. Try to relay these facts to where it mattes the most. The Government, Corporations and Large NGOs are the ones who can make significant difference. Urge the government to supply goods to people living in villages.

The government vacated the schools for people, they already have the database and location of schools, they should go there and provide food and amenities to the self-respecting Pakistani’s from Swat/Buner/Dir/Malakand.

Donate Cash

Bank: Citibank (Z-Block Branch, DHA, Lahore, Pakistan)
Title: Fadil Aleem
Currency: Pak Rupees
Account No: 2003430572

Western Union:

Send money to Fadil Aleem in Pakistan through Western Union for a small fee charged by them. Contact him (Fadil Aleem, +92-345-4022058) for details.

PayPal:

Contact Shiraz Bashir in USA. If you cannot use paypal, contact me for alternate methods. shirazbashir@gmail.com

Each one of you reading these needs to spread the word and exercise your influence within your circle of friends!


Special Thanks
• Mr. Tariq Saeed, faculty member, PhD Candidate GIKI for providing help by letting us use their facilities.
• MCS (NUST) administration, Chief Instructor, all HoDs for listening to us and trusting us to use their funds raised for this purpose.
• Telecom Society/Software Society MCS (NUST) for raising funds on short notice.
• Maj. Zulqarnain Gillani, faculty member/administration MSC NUST for his relentless and extremely valuable efforts no matter what hour of the day.
• All local Social Workers in Mardan District without whose selfless and vital help we wouldn’t have been able to run this show smoothly.
• Our families and employers who have supported us in this cause.
• All donors: friends, families, colleagues, friends of friends. Without you we wouldn’t have anything to deliver!


External Links

Musical Presentation:
Children of Swat- Plight of Pakistan's IDPs
Thanks to Muhammad Adeel for creating and uploading this on short notice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUaxjExb_m8

Photographs:
Thanks to Shiraz Bashir for hosting our photographs here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shirazbashir/sets/72157619013417043/

Video Interviews:
We have videotaped interviews of real IDPs. We are editing them for upload and will share them soon.

Our Team
Ali Amir – is a graduate of GIKI, working for Unilever Pakistan. He is an ex-president of ‘Project GIKI’ which has been instrumental in 2005 Kashmir Earthquake relief efforts from the GIKI platform.

Ali Ibrahim – is a graduate of GIKI, working for PTCL Broadband. He voluntarily went to Kashmir for relief efforts during the devastating 2005 Earthquake.

Fadil Aleem – is a graduate of NUST (MCS), employed by LCC, working as a RF planning consultant for Telenor Pakistan. He is a volunteer member of ‘Signalianz’ Services Committee (MCS-NUST Alumni Association)

Mian Khurram – is a graduate of GIKI and now a businessman.
Rana Saqib Saeed – is a currently a student at Bahria University and is about to graduate.

Shiraz Bashir- is a graduate of is a graduate of NUST (MCS), employed by GE Healthcare in USA, working as a Lead Program Integrator for Advance Visualization System for Radiologists. He is a co-founder and advisor to member ‘Signalianz’ (MCS-NUST Alumni Association)

Umar Ashraf – is a graduate of GIKI, working in RF Planning Team of Telenor Pakistan. During his studies at GIKI, he voluntarily went to Kashmir for relief efforts during the devastating 2005 Earthquake.

Umair Khan Lodhi – is a graduate of Punjab University and ILM (now UMT). Umair has been working with Nokia Siemens Networks (ex-Siemens) in the past.