ISLAMABAD: The capital’s police have unveiled a strategy to monitor the inflow of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the city with the help of property dealers, police officials told Dawn, meanwhile possible host families with relatives in North Waziristan Agency (NWA) will also be under scrutiny.

The strategy was formulated to identify terrorists, suspected militants and their facilitators, if they attempt to arrive in Islamabad under the guise of IDPs, they added.

In this regard, a software has been designed to store the IDPs’ data and to share it with all military and civil intelligence agencies for verification.

Pashtun families with relatives in NWA ‘to be monitored’

The police has arranged special subscriber identity modules (SIMs) and distributed them among 1,400 property dealers operating in the city, especially in rural areas such as Bhara Kahu, Tarnol, Golra, Koral, Sihala, Shahzad Town, Banigala and adjacent localities.

The police will use the collected data to keep a record of the IDPs who will come to Islamabad and rent or purchase property here.

The property dealers will send the details of the IDPs to a central server, using the SIMs provided to them by the police, the officials said, adding that the details of the IDPs will be picked up from the server by the intelligence agencies.

Then, their status will be verified by the police using their criminal record, if any.

Those IDPs who will get their houses on rent can be easily identified, however, those who will stay will their relatives in Islamabad will be harder to identify, they admitted.

For this, the police are also approaching host families and to collect details, they said, adding that those who have relatives in North Waziristan will be monitored.

So far, according to the reports, no IDPs have arrived in Islamabad, the official said, adding that a few internally displaced families have settled with host families in the neighbouring city of Rawalpindi.

Keeping this in view, the capital police has started surveying local Pashtun families, especially those that hail from North Waziristan, the officials said, adding that a large number of Pashtun families were residing in Sadiqabad area and that there was a strong possibility that their relatives from North Waziristan would come to stay with them, temporarily.

When contacted, Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf’s Asad Umer, who is the member of National Assembly from NA-48 Islamabad, said, “It would not be appropriate to see each and every IDP or Pashtun as a criminal, this would create divisions.”

The intelligence agencies should know who the terrorists are and should stop them before they leave the tribal areas, he said, adding that there are about 750,000 displaced people and all of them are not terrorists.

Besides, it is difficult to monitor such a large number of people, he pointed out.

Human Rights Activist Tahira Abdullah told Dawn that the government and the interior minister put a ban on the entry of IDPs in Islamabad, claiming that they might bring the poliovirus and terrorism. Such a ban in a violation of human rights and the Constitution, she added.

Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2014