Operation Khyber-I: Over 170,000 displaced from Bara, Tirah Valley

Only a minuscule number of displaced people sheltering at Jalozai camp

PESHAWAR: More than 170,000 tribal people have been displaced by Operation Khyber-I currently underway in Bara and Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency since mid-October.

“Though sporadic displacement continues, so far we have registered 21,939 families comprising 171,559 individuals,” Haseeb Khan, the assistant director at the Fata Disaster Management Authority (FDMA), told the media on Friday.

Of them, only 673 families have shifted to a tent village set up by the government at Jalozai area, while the rest have either rented houses in towns and cities of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa or preferred to live with their relatives in Peshawar or elsewhere in the country.

Children make up the bulk of the displaced people. “They include 91,744 children and 39,361 women,” Khan said. Some families lodged complaints with government officials and NGOs about missing children.

Senior journalist Farzana Ali who had visited the Jalozai camp on Friday said that she met several women who lost their children while travelling from Tirah to Peshawar. She also said that the camp lacked basic facilities. “I saw a large number of families, sheltering in makeshift tents,” Farzana told The Express Tribune.

The government with the help of UNHCR is providing one tent to each family. However, most families allege that they have not been given tents. Official records reveal that an average family comprises seven to eight persons, while some have over a dozen members who cannot be accommodated in one tent.

FDMA spokesperson Fauzia Shehzad claims that they are providing edible and other items of daily use at Jalozai camp. The displaced people, however, contradict this claim. “Some welfare organisations provided us food and edible items after we entered Peshawar, while no government official has contacted us thus far,” Said Rasaan, who migrated from Tirah, told the media.

Another Afridi tribesman Sher Jan said, “We left all our belongings when jet fighters started bombing of our area. We don’t have even clothes and blankets.”

Elders from different tribes and politicians from Khyber Agency meet government officials almost daily to seek redressal of their problems. The authorities concerned, however, haven’t done anything to alleviate their suffering, forcing the displaced people to go for protests.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 1^st, 2014.