Thousands of IDPs want return to hometowns

PESHAWAR: Thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), particularly the ones hailing from Tirah valley in Khyber district, have asked the government to send them back to their native areas as peace has been restored.

A large number of IDP families have returned to their homes in the merged districts in the last many years but still thousands of them have yet to go back. An IDP from Tirah valley said their area was cleared in 2017 but twenty-two thousand families are still stranded which include the entire Kukikhel tribe along with hundreds of families from Sipoh, Qamarkhel, Malakdinkhel and Qambarkhel. They had to leave their homes due to militancy and military operation since 2012. “Kukikhel is one of the seven Afridi tribes whose members are living in Khyber. Just like other Afridi tribes who own land in lower Khyber, Kukikhel too own land in Jamrud tehsil. A number of Kukikhel and other tribes are in fact “dwa kori,” having two homes, one near urban centres and Peshawar while another on their ancestral lands in Tirah,” said one IDP Naushad Ali Afridi. He added that in 2018, the authorities opened registration for remaining Tirah IDPs in which twenty-two thousand Kukikhel families registered themselves for return. The IDP families said initially when Kukikhel became IDPs only 1400 families were registered and the rest were ignored. Ration and other support were only given to these registered families. A number of Afridi tribesmen have been protesting against non-registration of their families despite they had to leave their homes. Naushad Ali said these families knocked every door but the response was disappointing.

He added one of the reasons they were told about the non-registration of these families was that they had dual CNIC addresses, for having two homes in the valley and urban areas. Another IDP said the Kukikhel owned land in lower Khyber and had made CNICs on address of lower area. He added tribal addresses are mostly by tribe and subtribe and area of the subtribe, which is to be identified as per their tribal structure.

The members of these twenty-two thousand families said they had income and livelihood from Tirah who are now deprived of their survival means for past more than eight years and are living a miserable life. Kukikhel have time and again protested and demanded dignified return of all of their families to Tirah but all their demands fell deaf ears. They said in 2018, the Fata Disaster Management Authority (FDMA) had paid Rs35,000 per family to the 1400 registered IDPs for return instead of the 22,000 families who had registered themselves for return.

Even those 1400 families are yet to return. The IDPs representatives said the local leadership of all political parties from the area have started a sit-in at Jamrud for the last 16 days while they were highlighting the matter on social media actively. They are demanding dignified return and adequate compensation of their destroyed properties at Tirah for all IDPs of the Kukikhel and other tribes.