In a few weeks the owners of a small, three-room flat above a tea-shop in a noisy Peshawar bazaar in northwestern Pakistan will be looking for a new tenant because the current occupant, Fayazullah Jan, is leaving.
The 34-year-old drummer from Swat Valley used to play at weddings to earn a living until Taliban militants seized control of the area in 2007 and declared music un-Islamic.
Out of work, Fayazullah moved from his home town of Mingora (the principal city in Swat) and rented the flat in Peshawar. But he was unable to find regular employment, and life proved hard.
“I had been doing this [playing music] since I was 12 years old, like my father and grandfather before me,” he said. Then the Taliban stopped music from being played. “I had no means of earning a livelihood and was scared for my safety. I left Swat in December 2008 for Peshawar.”
With militants on the retreat since the summer of 2009 and a victory over them declared by the military in February 2010 life has begun returning to normal in Swat and neighbouring districts such as Buner and Dir.
“I have spoken to people in Mingora and it now seems safe to go back,” Fayazullah said. He is confident he can resume earning on a regular basis and “put my three children back in school”.
Fayazullah is not alone. Many others in Swat, including barbers who were prevented by the Taliban from shaving beards or cutting hair in a stylized fashion, have resumed work.
Hopes for tourism sector
The valley, a former tourist resort area some 160km from Islamabad, has also seen evidence of a revival of tourism - a primary source of livelihood for many before the insurgency.
The conflict displaced an estimated 200,000 of Swat’s 1.8 million inhabitants in early 2009 as government forces battled Fazlullah's followers who were calling for a holy war against the government and the establishment of a strict version of Shariah law.
"My hotel, which stands by the River Swat had been damaged by floods last summer, but we had seen tourists return early in 2010 and I had earned some money [so I] had enough savings to re-build,” hotel owner Khan Muhammad told IRIN from Mingora.
He is confident there will be more tourists this year, as hotter weather in the plains brings people to the cooler north.
“The revival of tourism in an area like Swat would bring income to many households, because waiters, cooks, guides and others would be able to go back to work,” economic analyst Sikander Lodhi told IRIN.
Livelihood revival
In Malakand Division (an administrative zone of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province which includes Swat District), where more than three million people have suffered economically since the conflict escalated between Pakistani government forces and militants in early 2009, initiatives like the Sarhad rural support programme are helping to improve livelihoods through skills enhancement.
“The need for revival of livelihoods was felt because of the wide-ranging impact that the conflict had on the lives of local populations,” Shakeel Ahmad, a programme officer with the UN Development Programme, told IRIN.
“According to the Conflict Early Recovery Needs Assessment exercise carried out by the UN system towards the start of the return of IDPs to their home towns, 99 percent of people reported that the conflict had significantly and negatively impacted their non-farm-based livelihoods… The interventions will help people revive their sources of livelihoods.”
Mingora-based social activist Jamil Khan said: “Right now many people here are hopeful. Many have been able to resume work, especially groups such as barbers, or CD and video shop owners who were targeted by the Taliban, and this means money has again begun to come into households.”
However, with the 2 March assassination in Islamabad of Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, who had urged reforms to the blasphemy laws, nothing in Pakistan can be taken for granted.
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