Karachi: Swat IDPs start returning to city after collapse of peace pact

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Fawad Ali Shah
KARACHI: They are back with tears in their eyes and sweet memories of a month in which they breathed a sigh of relief and slept in their own homes.

“The past month was a life experience for me,” said Gibran Gul, a resident of Swat, who had migrated to Karachi after the military operation began. After the peace agreement between Taliban and the NWFP government, those who migrated to Karachi went back to Swat, to their homes. They thought that their miseries had ended.

“But we were wrong,” Gul narrates his sorrow tale. According to him, for the first few weeks there was peace in Swat and they lived through the best days of their lives; most of their neighbours had even returned to rebuild their lives and their ruined homes.

“We all sat together in the open fields at night and discussed the days we passed in refuge,” Gul went on to say; he revealed that there was satisfaction, a sense of peace.

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) of Swat and Bajaur returned to their homes after the peace agreement was signed between the secular ruling party of NWFP, the Awami National Party and the Taliban. They returned in the hope that peace had been permanently restored in the city. Their hopes, however, did not last for long; after the failure of the agreement between the Taliban and the provincial government, these people once again left their hopes, fleeing for their lives and leaving everything behind.

According to non-official sources, at least 3,000 people migrated to Karachi for protection. “Our children went to their own schools and played in the lush-green fields once again,” said Gul, however, now he cannot foresee peace in the area even in the far future.

Most of the families are coming on buses; despite the curfew in the area, they travel for miles on foot to reach the bus stations to book tickets to reach their destinations.

“I played with my friends and met with my madams,” Rameesha, Gul’s seven-year-old daughter shares her sweet memories. She is smiling, maybe because of the joy she felt when she went back home or the fact that she safely left it again.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg12_3