Another mass movement of people in Pakistan

Around half a million people are expected to be displaced by the current military operation in North Waziristan.

In a series of articles beginning today, I will discuss how Pakistan is likely to be affected by the large-scale movement of people now underway as a consequence of Operation Zarb-e-Azb launched on June 15 to flush out extremist groups operating out of North Waziristan. Each past episode of migration left deep impressions on Pakistani society, on the country’s political system and on the economy. The present movement of people from North Waziristan will be no different.

According to the latest government registration figures, 435,429 people have fled the combat zones in the tribal agency since mid-June. After a slow start, the government geared up its system created some time ago to deal with crises. Registration is being done at a number of border areas and the refugees are being issued national identity cards while the affected children are being inoculated against polio. The Pakistani government and its humanitarian community partners expect up to half a million people to be displaced by the current military operation. According to a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson, this would bring the total number of displaced people from the tribal regions of the country to a million and a half. This includes 930,000 uprooted in various waves since 2009 when the military moved into Swat to drive out the Taliban. This means that North Waziristan would have been completely depopulated. Before the military operation began, its estimated population was 520,000.

It is useful to place a discussion of this particular movement of people in international, as well as national perspectives. I will do both, beginning with the international. According to Serge Schmemann, of The New York Times, “statistics are not usually effective at depicting tragedy, which is why UN reports rarely generate passion. But the figures released this past week (June 20, 2014) by the UN refugee agency offer perhaps, the starkest reflection of the strife, raking vast stretches of the globe. The number of people around the world forced by conflict to flee their homes, the UNHCR reported, has soared past 51 million, the highest number since World War II. That’s more than six times the population of New York City, emptied into squalid camps.”

Most of these refugees are what the UN refers to as ‘internally displaced’ — people who have fled their homes but not their countries. The UNHCR estimate is a full six million higher than the previous year. The UNHCR’s report recognised two groups of people within those displaced: refugees who left their countries and went across borders to escape violence at home and those who were internally displaced. The latter is now the dominant group estimated at 34.5 million. The countries with the largest refugee populations were Pakistan, Iran and Lebanon. The region with the largest refugee populations were Asia and the Pacific with a total of 3.5 million people. Sub-Saharan Africa totaled 2.9 million and North Africa 2.6 million. There are a number of refugee-producing conflicts going on in the world at this time. Almost all of them are in the Muslim world. The countries most affected are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria. Of these, Pakistan is the only one that is both producing refugees, as well as receiving them.

In 2013, Afghans, Syrians and Somalis accounted for over half the total number of refugees. According to The New York Times’s Somini Sengupta, “the movements of refugees are a glimpse into the world’s troubled spots. In 1975, the UN agency counted just over 3.6 million refugees with the largest number from Ethiopia. By 1992, there were nearly 18 million refugees worldwide, with over four million of them from Afghanistan alone. By 2004, the number had dipped to about nine million, but by then, refugees from Darfur had begun to flee Sudan.” Over the last decade, the number has increased significantly. How this movement of people will affect Pakistan is the subject of next week’s article.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 30^th, 2014.

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