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WEEKLY
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| Bajaur operation enters eighth day |
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Displaced families’ miseries mounting
Friday, August 15, 2008
Yousaf Ali
PESHAWAR: The miseries of the people who fled the restive Bajaur Agency and those stranded there have been multiplying with each passing day, as the military operation backed by jetfighters and gunship helicopters entered the eight consecutive day on Thursday.
Several hundred thousands people have so far fled Bajaur Agency where the jetfighters and choppers continued shelling in all directions. Most of the people who have fled the volatile tribal region are spending their nights in the open, as the government has not made any arrangements for providing them shelter.
Some private organisations and political parties have set up relief camps at Munda, Timergara, Samarbagh, Chakdara and other towns of the neighbouring Lower Dir district, where they have been providing temporary shelter and other necessary items.
The operation victims, who don’t have relatives in nearby districts or any other settled areas to take shelter there, have been accommodated temporarily at the public sector schools and other facilities in the major towns of Dir Lower, particularly Munda, Samarbagh and Timergara.
A series of tents can also be witnessed on both sides of the road passing through Dir district where the people have been staying with the hope that the operation would come to an end soon and they would return to their homes.
The displaced families are also concerned about what they have left behind. Mohammad Iqbal, a resident of Skandro, Bajaur, told The News that he took women and children from the agency and left one brother to take care of the cattle heads, household items and standing crops. “But here, I am more concerned about the life of my brother,” he said.
At every home in the agency, only one or two persons have stayed behind to look after their goods and properties, while the rest have come out of the agency, said Mohammad Ilyas, another resident of the agency.
Most people have taken shelter with their relatives in Dir, Malakand Agency, Mardan, Peshawar and Mohmand Agency. Some have been residing in the relief camps, while the others searching for houses on rents.
The property dealers and house owners have increased rents of houses and flats manifold due to the unprecedented increase in demand. Even on higher rates, houses are not available on rents. The increase in rents can be judged from the fact that the rent of a four-room house in Takhtbhai town of Mardan district is charged more than Rs20,000 a month, what to talk of Peshawar, said Javed Khan, a resident of Mulla Killey in Bajaur searching for a house in Takhtbhai.
Mursaleen, an office-bearer of Bajaur Youth Movement, who hails from Charmang village of Bajaur but settled in the provincial metropolis, said nine families had taken shelter in his small house located near Sabzi Mandi. “I got tired while searching a rented house but I failed to find any. I am ready to pay higher rent, but house is not available,” he said.
An elderly lady staying with her relatives in Takhtbhai town along with her family said that after leaving Bajaur on the second day of the military operation, they stayed in the house of a friend of her son in Maidan area of Bajaur wherefore they shifted to her daughter’s house. She said it was painful to see her grandchildren crying, as they still had the resonance of bombardment in their ears.
She said she had left her house full of necessary items and cattle heads. “I don’t know whether the cows I have left back in home are alive or died of hunger and thirst, as there is none to feed them,” she said.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
