Making Refugees in Pakistan.

• Author: Kelly, Kathy
• Position: Displaced people due to military attacks - Essay

Surrounded by farmland in Pakistan's Swabi district, the village of Shah Mansoor can be reached by a bumpy road. Outside the village, thousands of tents have become a temporary home to displaced Pakistanis from the Swat area. Traumatized by their recent past and uncertain about their future, they languish in the stifling heat, feeling trapped and abandoned. On June 10, we visited the camp and met people who had fled their homes because of fierce fighting in the Swat Valley.

As camp residents clustered around us, a shopkeeper began to tell about the horror they had endured before arriving in Shah Mansoor. Subjected to a twenty-four-hour curfew, they couldn't leave their homes during the first weeks of the Pakistani offensive. The shopkeeper said that Pakistan's armed forces indiscriminately shelled their town, Mingora, in an effort to dislodge suspected supporters of the Taliban. On May 27, the curfew was lifted for several hours. Families scrambled to grab belongings and escape on foot.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Amid the commotion and chaos, harried residents also tried to bury some of the corpses they saw along the road leading out of town.

"There were not hundreds but thousands of dead bodies on the streets," said the shopkeeper. "We had only enough time to dig a mass grave and cover some of the bodies with mud."

Exhausted after a three-day walk, the refugees finally reached Shah Mansoor. "They were killing us in that way, there," the shopkeeper said, "and now in this way, here." He motioned toward the tents.

There are increasingly frequent cases of diarrhea, scabies, and malaria, which are especially lethal for young children.

A few days earlier, we visited a hospital in nearby Ghazi, where ten families from the Swat Valley had sought temporary shelter. The hospital was dilapidated and largely abandoned. The only functioning section was a small clinic and dispensary that opened for a few hours in the morning. We didn't see any doctors or nurses, and the newly displaced people inhabiting the hospital said very few medical supplies were available.

People living in the decrepit Ghazi hospital introduced us to a man who had shrapnel wounds on his back. He told us that on May 21, he and seven others were attempting to flee the violence in Buner when the Pakistan army attacked their van, killing one of the passengers and wounding five. The attack was launched from an American-made Cobra helicopter.

Three such helicopters flew overhead as we ended...