Almost 97,000 people pack the sprawling Jalozai camp, driven there by militancy, writes MARY FITZGERALD,Foreign Affairs Correspondent in Jalozai, northwest Pakistan
THE WOMEN stream in to the bamboo-fenced compound in twos and threes, lifting their shuttlecock-shaped burkas as soon as they know they are safe from prying male eyes. The faces underneath look tired and creased with worry. Sitting cross-legged on floor matting, the women begin chatting among themselves, swapping stories of sickly children, depressed husbands and how to stave off the cold of winter.
Home for these women is Jalozai, a sprawling camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Just less than 97,000 people live in Jalozai, making it the largest such camp in Pakistan. Most are from Bajaur, Khyber and Mohmand, three of the areas worst affected as Islamabad’s battle with homegrown militants continues.
For many of the women, the horrors that prompted them to flee their villages and hamlets are still fresh in their minds. The name Mangal Bagh comes up again and again. A former bus conductor, Mangal Bagh now heads Lashkar-e-Islam, one of a constellation of militant groups operating in Pakistan’s northwestern flank. He established his own Taliban-like regime in large swathes of Khyber, and in 2008 boasted of having 120,000 armed fighters. “Ours is a reformist organisation trying to promote virtue and prevent vice,” he said at the time, claiming to have rid one district of “drug-traffickers, gamblers, kidnappers, car-snatchers and other criminals” while promising to “cleanse” another of those “selling drugs and liquor and running gambling dens”.
Mangal Bagh’s name soon became synonymous with brutality and fear. “He ordered us to wear the burka and said we could not work in the fields anymore,” says one woman. “There was no fun, no music and no dancing at weddings. Men were punished if they did not wear prayer caps and attend the mosque every day.”
Another tells the story of three local doctors killed in the space of a day. “Their bodies were found cut into pieces with notes pinned on saying this was punishment for working for the government.”
When the Pakistani army moved against Lashkar-e-Islam, the ensuing fighting prompted an exodus from the area. Sifat lost her husband during her terrifying journey to safety – he was hit by a stray bullet. “We were walking and suddenly he fell to the ground. He died in my arms. I felt his last breath,” she says, her voice quivering. “I have four children and I cannot imagine their future.”
So far the military has failed to dislodge Mangal Bagh and his minions. The group is suspected of funnelling fighters across the border to battle US and Afghan forces and is also blamed for sabotaging Nato’s supply line.
The storied Khyber Pass is Nato’s main route for convoys into Afghanistan – an estimated 70 per cent of Nato’s supplies move through the strategic crossing point en route to Kabul. The pass has been shut down several times because of militant attacks.
Last year the US began carrying out drone strikes against redoubts belonging to Lashkar-e-Islam and other militant factions in Khyber. In mid-December, close to 60 people were killed in a series of drone attacks carried out over 24 hours – Pakistani officials say it was the highest death toll due to drones in a single day in 2010.
In Jalozai – which has received several waves of displaced over the last year (in December 400 families arrived from the restive Mohmand area) – countless stories of loss and desperation are to be found among the interrupted lives that play out within the camp’s perimeter.
“Those who live in camps tend to be the poorest, without any other option as most displaced people in northwest Pakistan have tended to stay with host families, relatives or rent rooms,” says Ariane Rummery of the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR.
The women, who have received training in needlework and basic health from UNHCR, have no idea when they might be able to return home. The challenges and privations of camp life leave many frustrated. Others are more resigned. “We will go back when there is no fighting, no bombardment, and no Mangal Bagh,” one says as she rearranges her yellow burka, a bolt of colour against the blue, black, grey and beige around her. “Some say it might take five years or more. All we can do is wait.”