Pakistan - Remembering The IDPs

In political discourse the comments on operation Zarb-e-Azb typically feature praise for the armed forces; who are thanked for their services and lauded for their professionalism. While they deserve surely credit for their endeavours the commentary usually neglects the sacrifices of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) – except to use their plight to chide politicians for focusing on other topics. Events such as the intervention in Yemen have pushed the IDPs further down in the national public priority. Perhaps it is forgotten that notwithstanding a militant reprisal campaign, the IDPs remain the most immediate and wide-ranging fallout of the military operation, one that needs to be catered too lest it spill over into the kind of disorder that accompanied the refugees of the Afghan war. The numbers of IDPs has surged to an estimated 1.9 million; accounting for 46% of the people displaced by conflict and violence in South Asia in 2014. Yet it seems that away from the limelight and the attended sensationalism the process of rehabilitation and repatriation is going a steady pace. However, official reports only measure progress in terms of the number of IDPs repatriated to their homelands; not in terms of the quality of the rehabilitative services provided or the feasibility of a sustainable lifestyle on their return; providing no indication whether the people left behind all worldly possessions at the instruction of the state were given proper recompense, or were they bundled up into transports and sent back - letting them fend for themselves.
The government has displayed a measure of prudence when dealing with the IDPs. The National Database and Registration Authority have registered most of the displaced families – totalling at 103,508. The returnees have been asked to undertake security responsibilities and have been made part of the local decision-making set-up; making them more involved in statecraft. As of now only North Waziristan lags behind, repatriation in South Waziristan and Khyber Agency has been remarkably quick, with almost 20,000 families being repatriated to the latter. Yet these reports are also interspersed with reports that claim rampant corruption in the compensation and food ration schemes. On May 24, the North Waziristan IDP Qaumi Committee demanded the government release the monthly financial assistance promised to the displaced people before Ramazan starts, amongst other demands to end exploitation. In the same month, officials at Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) National Accountability Bureau (NAB) uncovered fraud worth Rs500 million in the IDP compensation scheme of 2008 operation in Khyber. The state is more interested in ‘holding’ the tribal areas peacefully rather than truly re-compensating the IDPs; their security decisions are implemented immediately, while economic aid languishes n distant warehouses.