Hundreds of Pakistani citizens who have been displaced by the Taliban offense in the Swat Valley have been incrementally returning home following an announcement from the Pakistani government on July 13 that a three-phase plan to bring them back is underway, according to The New York Times.
Those who have returned home are a very small part of about two million refugees who have been shifted from their homes in Swat due to the intensifying war in the region. Since the Pakistani government conceded control of the district to the Taliban in February, militant activity has been on the rise, and the United States has assisted the government in combating Talibani forces.
But cCoupled with an eagerness to return home is an uncertainty of their security upon and after arrival. Some refugees have been in government camps for months, but are still hesitant to go back to their regular lives.
On July 13 the government provided buses and trucks to transport hundreds of families to Swat from “three camps in the Mardan and Charsadda districts, south of the valley.”
Many families are beginning to send out one or two relatives to their neighborhoods to see if the area is safe enough to come back to. They are cautiously deciding whether returning home is worth the risk of being killed.
800 families are to leave the refugee camps for Bari Kot in Swat on July 14 as part of the first stage of the government’s three-step approach to returning all refugees home.
According to Ahmad Rajwana, “the chief coordinator of refugee camps for the government of the North-West Frontier Province in the Swabi district,” who spoke to the Times, refugees signed a declaration to prove that they were not leaving against their own will, or under government pressure.
Two weeks ago, around 4,000 refugees fled the Chot Lahore camp in Swat under their own desire, even before the government publicly launched their three-phase plan.
Unexpected violence in the southern part of Punjab Province, in which at least 60 were injured and at least nine, including seven children, were killed in a devastating explosion has alarmed Pakistani refugees. They are comforted by general declines in violence in their villages, but still in trepidation of a sudden attack.
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