A family at the Sheik Yaseen camp grieved for a relative. The family will be unable to hold a burial in their hometown. (Carolyn Cole/ Los Angeles Times)
"Displaced Pakistanis long to return to their homes" by Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times | June 28, 2009
MARDAN, Pakistan - Any early novelty is long gone. Time drags and insecurity weighs heavily. For many of the 11,000 residents of the Sheik Yaseen displacement camp, six weeks in with untold more to go, homesickness and a sense of dislocation are intensifying quickly.
On a breezy day, as the wind whipped up garbage and dirt, a fine dust settling on tents and eyes, thoughts turned to home. For most in Sheik Yaseen, that’s the picturesque Swat Valley, a former tourist haven once dubbed “the Switzerland of Pakistan,’’ which they fled when the Pakistani Army launched its ongoing offensive against Taliban militants.
Now, as the army prepares to launch a new offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, an additional 200,000 temporarily displaced Pakistanis might be added to the estimated 2 million already forced to leave their homes.
First of all, it is OVER 3 MILLION, and I REALLY RESENT the UNDERPLAYING and UNDER-COUNTING of the U.S. CAUSED CRISIS!
Those in this camp say they wish their fate on no one else.
And despite the suffering, they are STILL PURE of SPIRIT -- so unlike Amurkns!!
“Everybody loves their own land,’’ said Mian Sedi Jan, an 80-something retired driver from Mingora in Swat who doesn’t know his exact age but remembers driving to Bombay before Pakistan and India split in 1947. As several children huddle around him, he whacks at them with a stick for getting too close to his spot on the floor of the brown tent he shares with his wife.
“We just want to go home. It’s the sweetest place on earth.’’
The Pakistani government, under pressure from the United States and a growing number of its own citizens, sees the human cost as necessary to remove Islamist militants who increasingly have threatened state authority, destroyed girls’ schools, and beheaded critics.
I'm tired of the DEMONIZING LIES about Taliban when it is U.S. ASSETS raising hell in the region, as well as the lies about it being supported by the people!!
Here at the camp, however, people seem divided on whether the Swat offensive has been worth the price in property, lives, and inconvenience they’ve experienced firsthand.
Even though a growing number of.... oh, forget it!
For Mursleen Khan, a 34-year-old Swat sharecropper, the peaches weigh most heavily on his mind. This is peak harvest time, when the boughs groan under the weight of the sweet fruit, and Khan is distraught that fighting has kept him from his orchard, which accounts for the bulk of his livelihood.
“I’m here and they’re there,’’ he said. “It’s about all I can focus on right now.’’
With no work, little distraction, and no place to go, many camp dwellers find little to focus on but the unpleasant conditions, and tempers easily flare.
“The tent’s too hot, the kids are uncomfortable, there’s not enough water and I have no work,’’ said Fazal Rabi, 45, living in one of the long rows of look-like tents with his wife, eight daughters, and two sons. “We want to go home soon, God willing.’’
An ambulance pulls into the camp loaded with three wailing women and the body of a 70-year-old woman. The arrival draws a crowd of camp dwellers that watches six men carry the corpse to an area behind a plastic tarp. It takes some shouting and scuffles with the crowd before relatives gain some privacy in which to grieve.
Even the souls of the dead - the deceased woman had developed stomach problems and a high fever after her family was forced to flee Mingora - want to return to Swat, said Sahib Zada, a relative who blamed the death on an overtaxed medical system and move-related stress.
“We want to bury her in her home village, but the government has blocked the road,’’ Zada said. “Now we’ll have to bury her here in the camp. Ideally, she should enjoy her final rest at home, and it is very disturbing not to see that.’’
Yes, this whole article is DISTURBING and HEARTBREAKING!
Government officials struggling to address the humanitarian crisis have said that displaced people should be able to return to Swat within a week or so.
Pffft!
Those living in tents, however, note that new arrivals from Swat speak of continued fighting, hardly ideal conditions for returning home.
So the government and MSM have been blowing smoke at us again, huh?
“All this uncertainty and confusion creates real mental tension,’’ said Sher Ali, 19, a photocopy shop employee from Mingora. “And when we do finally go back, who knows whether we’ll find our house destroyed by all the fighting.’
--more--"
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack yesterday on security forces in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, calling it a sign that recent military strikes targeting the group’s top leader have not hampered his ability to hit back.
Isn't that on the OTHER SIDE of the COUNTRY?
It was the first time the intensifying conflict between Pakistani forces and the Taliban has reached Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan enclave that has long been a flashpoint for violence between Pakistan and archrival India.
Oh, I SMELL a FALSE-FLAG STINK and it SMELLS INDIAN!!!!
The assault was meant to show that the Taliban could strike wherever it wishes in Pakistan, a spokesman for the militants said, indicating they were likely not trying to stoke tensions between the nuclear-armed adversaries.
Why not? Wouldn't that divert Pakistan forces from the FATA?
Why does this STINK?
But hitting security forces in such a strategically and politically sensitive region as Kashmir may be an attempt to distract the military as it prepares for a major operation against Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in his stronghold along the Afghan border.
All over a DEAD GUY, huh?
Islamic militant groups have operated in the divided territory of Kashmir for years, often with clandestine support from elements of Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies, analysts say. But New Dehli’s rule over the Indian portion of the region has been the target of previous attacks.
A Slow Saturday special, huh?
Early yesterday, a suicide bomber approached an army vehicle in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, and detonated his explosives, killing two soldiers and wounding three others, the army said in a statement.
Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy of the Taliban leader, told the Associated Press that the assault was launched to prove that Mehsud was still a force to be reckoned with despite two major military campaigns against the Taliban in Pakistan’s volatile northwest.
And despite the mountainside grave?
“We are in a position to respond to the army’s attacks, and time will prove that these military operations have not weakened us,’’ Hakimullah Mehsud told the AP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Couldn't they TRACE the CALL?
The Taliban leader is blamed for a series of suicide attacks across the country on targets including police and intelligence agency buildings, mosques, markets and an international hotel that have killed more than 100 people since late May.
Pretty good for a ghost.
Mehsud’s group has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks and warned of more. It says they are to avenge the military’s two-month-old campaign to oust the Taliban from the northeastern Swat Valley and to respond to a second operation against him that is heating up on his home turf of South Waziristan. President Asif Ali Zardari yesterday repeated that the government would not step back from hunting the Taliban.
Because WE DEMAND IT!
--more--"
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s military continued its bombing campaign on suspected militant hideouts in South Waziristan, with fighter jets striking the village of Kani Guram overnight, leaving eight militants dead.
Helicopter gunships also hit positions in Shah Alam and Raghhzai, killing three fighters, intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information.
It was not possible to independently confirm the casualty counts or the identities of those reported killed as journalists have little access to the remote, dangerous region.
--more--"
