ISLAMABAD: For over a week, Farzana Bibi kept on asking her father to take her to the market for Eid shopping.

The nine-year-old wanted to buy new clothes, shoes and bangles but her father, a displaced person from North Waziristan who now works as a labourer on a stone crushing plant in Taxila, could not fulfilled his promise made with his daughter.

Habib Khan, 42, the father of the girl, left his home in the Khushhali Turikhel village of tehsil Mirali three days before the launch of the military operation.

“It was a difficult decision to leave my own home but there was no other option to secure the life of my family members.” He said he and his family were living in a house at Tarnol which he took on a Rs9,000 rent.

IDPs face Ramazan in camps

Khan said he ran a shop in his village before the operation but it was difficult for him to set up a similar business in Islamabad due to the lack of resources.

He said he was now working as a labourer on a monthly salary of Rs14,000. With this amount, he added, it was difficult to manage the monthly expenses of his family.

So far, 164 families have arrived in capital and living with their relatives or in rented houses

Roshan Dawar, 55, from the Hurmaz village of Mirali, has also hired a house in Bhara Kahu.

Dawar told Dawn that he worked as a farmer in his village before coming to Islamabad due to the military operation.

He said initially he wanted to stay in the Bannu district but later moved to Islamabad as there were more opportunities of work for labourers in the federal capital.

“How could I feed my children without any work? No one is ready to hire me as a labourer due to my old age,” he added.

Shakirullah Wazir, 26, a resident of Khushhali village of Mirali, is also residing in Bhara Kahu along with his family and is searching for a job.

“After completing my MPhil in chemistry from the Quaid-i-Azam University recently, I have been trying to get a job. Before the start of the military operation, my family also reached in Islamabad,” Wazir added.

He said it was difficult for his family to stay in a rented house. He said his relatives had provided them two rooms in Bhara Kahu till the end of the operation.

He said one of his relatives had informed his father that their house in the village was destroyed in shelling during the military operation.

“Do you think it will be easy for us to construct a new house,” he asked.

Tanzeelur Rehman Dawar, 27, a resident of Mulagaan village, added that his family had shifted to Islamabad one month before the operation was launched.

He said his father recently retired as the principal of Government High School Hasokhel. He had planned to perform Haj after getting the pension.

“My father could not submit his application for Haj because we left our home and now are forced to live in a rented house in Bhara Kahu.”

Most of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) said it was difficult for them to say when the operation would end. They also feared that the rehabilitation of the IDPs would not be an easy task.

It is not easy for us to stay in Bannu without work, they added. This is the main reason some IDs are moving towards other cities to earn livelihoods for their families.

They said the government had announced that around 0.1 million IDPs were registered within a month after the operation was started. But there are thousands of people who left North Waziristan between January and May to secure their lives.

“These IDPs belonged to tehsil Mirali and Miramshah only while the government did not allow the residents of other tehsils such as Shawal, Razmak, Dosali, Garyoum, Ghulam Khan and Datakhel to leave their homes as these areas are already in the control of the military,” they added.

Captain retired Tariq Hayat, Joint Secretary Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (Safron), told Dawn that around 200 IDPs had so far arrived in the twin cities.

He said the ministry had registered 0.1 million people while the process of registration of the IDPs coming back from Afghanistan through Kurram Agency was in progress.

“The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) has verified around 52,986 families and the process is continuing,” he said.

He said 81 per cent families of the IDPs were residing in Bannu, six per cent in Lakki Marwat, five per cent in D.I. Khan, one per cent in Karak and around seven per cent in Peshawar, Islamabad and Karachi, etc.An official of the Islamabad police said they were monitoring the inflow of the IDPs with the help of property dealers to check the arrival of any militant.

He said the police had distributed special SIMs among property dealers through which they can share the details of the IDPs taking houses on rent with the police.

Rukan Zaman, a property dealer in Sector I-10, said he attended a meeting of property dealers with police officials in the Sector I-9 police station a few months ago. He said he had received a SIM to update the police about the IDPs, Afghan refugees and foreigners.

Chief Commissioner Islamabad Jawad Paul told Dawn that the Special Branch was conducting a survey to identify the IDPs in the city.

“A total of 164 families have arrived in Islamabad and are residing with their relatives or in rented houses. Some of them reached the city without getting themselves registered,” he said.

PPP Secretary Information Qamar Zaman Kaira said the ongoing military operation in NWA was on the right direction.

“It is always difficult for the military and the government to start an operation in its territory. The government should restore and maintain its writ in the conflict areas,” he said.

Mr Kaira said it was important for the government to defeat the mindset which created such militants. He said it would be a difficult task for the government to rehabilitate the IDPs.

PTI Secretary Information Dr Shireen Mazari added that the success of the operation would depend not only on the military operation but also on how we deal with the IDPs and their safe return.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2014