By Nadeem Sarwar and Stefan Mentschel Oct 21, 2009, 4:28 GMT
Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan - Hazrat Gul dodged flying bullets, exploding rockets, landmines and most importantly thirst and hunger as he fled the military offensive in Pakistan's tribal district of South Waziristan with his family.
Gul covered half the distance to Dera Ismail Khan, the first major town outside lawless South Waziristan, on a truck and the rest on foot on muddy roads because traffic was not allowed to move along the road under an indefinite curfew imposed by troops.
The threat to his life is over now, but like thousands of refugees who managed to escape the war zone, Gul, a 40-year-old farmer, faces a long struggle for day-to-day survival.
For the past two days, his extended family of 25 people has been crammed into a relative's two small rooms on the outskirts of Dera Ismail Khan.
'We live in big houses and an open environment, and this place is so suffocating,' Gul said as he sat on the carpet inside a room 3 metres by 4 metres. 'Ten males live here. We take turns in the night to get sleep.'
Fifteen women and children stay in the other room.
'We left our homes empty-handed and now the government is doing nothing for us,' Gul complained. 'We have got no food, no money.'
The numbers of refugees are swelling as around 30,000 Pakistani troops press ahead with their assault in South Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan, against 10,000 insurgents, which also include hundreds of terrorists liked to al-Qaeda.
The UN refugee agency warned of an emerging refugee crisis on Tuesday.
'At the moment, it is not a disaster but an emergency we need to respond to and the UNHCR is prepared to do so,' said Ariane Rummery, a spokeswoman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
She said the Pakistani government had registered 4,500 refugee families, comprising 32,000 people, since October 13.
They are joining 80,000 people who have already fled the region since May when the government announced it had decided on an offensive in the district.
'So altogether at this stage, there are about 112,000 registered refugees from South Waziristan,' Rummery said.
Rummery said no refugee camps were established for the uprooted people because they were staying with relatives or in rented accommodation in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank, which also adjoins South Waziristan.
However, local volunteers warned the lack of camps could aggravate the crisis because 10 and 20 per cent of the refugees had neither relatives to provide them with shelter nor money to rent a house.
'These people are forced to stay either at the roadside or in the trucks and tractor-towed trolleys they used to reach here,' said Saifur Rehman, an official from the only charity group, Foundation for Integrated Development Action, working in the region.
The foundation also carries out relief work on behalf of UNHCR and the Pakistani government.
More than 30,000 foot soldiers launched the offensive in South Waziristan early Saturday after weeks of bombing by jet aircraft and artillery.
The army said the first three days of the ground offensive killed at least 78 militants and nine soldiers while a Taliban spokesman claimed 'heavy casualties' had been inflicted on troops as the militants suffered minimal losses.
But the refugees - who are mostly from the Mehsud tribe like Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, who leads Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant umbrella organization - resent the military action.
'It's the Pakistani government and military that has uprooted us from our homes and villages,' said Hikmat Mehsud, who stood in a long, slow-moving queue of refugees waiting to register.
'They are the agents of the Americans and Jews,' said Hikmat, who claimed that the Taliban were putting up stiff resistance to the 'coward soldiers' in every corner of South Waziristan.
The current onslaught has drawn appreciation from Washington, which has pressed Pakistan to move decisively in South Waziristan, from where the Taliban and al-Qaeda launch cross-border raids on international forces in Afghanistan.
'I'm obviously encouraged by the Pakistani operations,' US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Tuesday en route to meetings in Tokyo.
Pakistani authorities said the operation was crucial mainly because the TTP was responsible for planning dozens of suicide attacks across the country, killing thousands of people, including former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.
The Taliban have targeted everyone - civilians as well as government officials - who disagree with their narrow version of Islam, which forbids female education and encourages gender segregation.
On Tuesday, two suicide bombers killed four people, including two female students, at an Islamic university in Islamabad. The institution was educating the students in a moderate version of Islam unacceptable to the Taliban.
'All the roads lead to South Waziristan,' Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told reporters.
The locals said they doubted the Waziristan offensive would yield any definitive results for the Pakistan Army, which has made at least three abortive attempts since 2004 to oust the Taliban from the rugged territory.
'What is wrong with the Taliban? Nothing,' the refugee Hikmat said. 'They are supporting their brothers who are fighting occupying forces in Afghanistan.'
'They can never defeat the Taliban because they are on the right side,' he asserted.
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