Aid Scarce as Pakistanis Flee Conflict

BANNU, Pakistan — The man waited for hours in the sweltering heat at a security checkpoint near here as his family struggled to leave Miram Shah, fleeing the military offensive the Pakistani military had announced against militants in North Waziristan.

Traffic was snarled for miles on Friday as thousands of people, terrified and uncertain, tried to escape the restive tribal region down narrow mountain roads. The temperature climbed to 104 degrees, and the man — Noor Madad Khan, a 44-year-old radiography technician — succumbed to heat stroke. “Noor Madad asked for water but could not get a single drop,” said his older brother, Khurshid Alam.

By the afternoon, Mr. Khan’s body lay outside a gas station in Bannu, a town in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province on the edge of North Waziristan that took his family two days to reach, a journey that can usually be made in an afternoon.

His four children — two sons and two daughters — stood around the body, which was covered by a white sheet. The family had not yet found a place to take shelter in the town, Mr. Alam said. “First,” he said, “we have to search for a graveyard to bury my brother’s body.”

 

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Map: Pakistan’s Hot Spots at a Glance

At least 200,000 civilians have fled the combat zone since Sunday, when the offensive called Operation Zarb-e-Azb, or Strike of the Prophet’s Sword, began. The campaign has set off the biggest humanitarian crisis caused by conflict in Pakistan since a major military offensive in the Swat Valley in 2009 displaced hundreds of thousands of people. In public statements, the military has acknowledged the importance of fostering tribal support for the current drive, and government officials have said that food and medical supplies are being shipped to affected areas to aid the refugees.

But there was little sign of that in Bannu on Friday.

Some wealthy local families were mounting their own relief efforts, setting up food stalls on the main road linking Bannu and Miram Shah. “We have been serving hundreds of people on a daily basis with cold drinking water and food since the first day of operation,” said Malik Jamal Bakakhel, who runs one of the stalls.

Officials said that at least 700 tents had been set up in a refugee camp, but most people arriving from the tribal areas are reluctant to live in government camps, preferring to find shelter on their own if they can.

The military offensive, meant to rein in a host of militant groups using the mountainous region on the Afghan border as a safe haven, could not have come at a worse moment for Jalil Khan and his family, who live in a village called Mossaki. His wife, Gul Mina Bibi, was expecting their second child, and her due date was fast approaching.

She had complications with her first delivery, so this time Mr. Khan wanted to take no chances and decided to bring her to the hospital in Bannu. But before the family could finish the journey, the offensive began and a curfew was imposed, making it hard for them to get anywhere.

“She gave birth to our baby boy near a roadside tree,” Mr. Khan said. “The situation was painful, and equally embarrassing,” he said, because “the rest of my family had already fled for safer places, and I was all by myself there with a truck driver helping me out in the delivery of my child.”

Fortunately, mother and infant came through. “I am all happy now that God blessed me with a healthy child,” Gul Mina said after the family finally arrived at Bannu.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif traveled to the region on Friday with the army chief of staff, Gen. Raheel Sharif. They visited Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, and were briefed by commanders on the progress of the operation.

Military officials say the army has yet to set its ground troops in motion in the area. The strikes so far have been mounted by the air force, with fighter-bombers pounding suspected militant hide-outs across North Waziristan.

Local tribesmen say the airstrikes have killed civilians, not militants. “I swear I did not see a single body of any dead terrorist in those attacks,” said Haji Azmat Jan, a tribal elder. “They might have been killed. But we have recovered dead bodies of dozens of innocent civilians, including women and children, from the debris of destroyed homes in different parts of North Waziristan.”

Both Pakistani and foreign journalists are barred from traveling to North Waziristan, and there was no independent confirmation of either militant or civilian casualties in the current operation.

Over the six months before the offensive, airstrikes by the Pakistani military in the country’s tribal northwest killed at least 266 people, including at least 16 civilians, according to data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The air campaign was enough to send many people in North Waziristan fleeing, without waiting for ground combat to start. “I, along with my entire family, consisting of 10 members, reached Bannu on foot,” said Jamal, a tailor who goes by only one name. “The government has done nothing for us. They are best in destroying us, rather than helping us.”

The Pakistani government has blocked the United Nations and other groups from delivering humanitarian aid to refugees from North Waziristan.

“The federal government has decided that at the moment it could handle the crisis on its own,” said a senior government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Using the abbreviation for internally displaced people, he said, “All relevant government bodies who deal with North Waziristan I.D.P.'s have been informed not to take any assistance from any foreign humanitarian organization, including the U.N.”