Pakistan’s IDP Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities

Islamabad/Brussels, 3 June 2009: Unless relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) are urgently improved, the army’s offensive against the Taliban risks leaving the extremists the ultimate winners.  

Pakistan’s IDP Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities,* the latest International Crisis Group policy briefing, examines the operations against religious militants in Malakand Division and their impact on internally displaced persons (IDPs) and local communities. The army’s use of heavy force, failure to address the full cost to civilians and refusal to allow effective humanitarian access to conflict zones has already been counterproductive. Public and political support for action against the Taliban could erode if civilian casualties are high and the response to IDP needs is inadequate. The government should create mechanisms to make aid distribution accountable to IDP communities, demand greater civilian oversight and humanitarian access, and prohibit banned jihadi groups from participating in relief efforts.

A military-sponsored deal earlier this year between the Taliban-linked Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi and NWFP’s ruling Awami National Party (ANP) to impose Sharia (Islamic law) in Malakand expanded the area of Taliban control. President Asif Zardari should immediately rescind the imposition of Sharia in Malakand, and the federal and provincial governments should enter into no similar military-backed compromises with militants in future that would reverse any battlefield gains.

“The end goal must not be to return Malakand Division to the situation before the onset of religious militancy in 2007, but to address the conditions that gave rise to that militancy in the first place”, says Samina Ahmed, Crisis Group’s South Asia Project Director. “Ousting the militants only to allow them new sanctuaries in other parts of the country, including the tribal areas, will not end but rather perpetuate the problem”.

The government should devise a blueprint for reconstruction, in particular of once vibrant agricultural, horticultural and tourism sectors that have been severely affected by years of militancy and armed conflict. It should also prioritise enhancing the capacity of civilian law enforcement agencies to maintain security once the military operations have ended. Likewise, it needs to implement political and constitutional reforms to restore the jurisdiction of Malakand’s regular courts and incorporate Pakistan’s tribal areas into NWFP, with full provincial rights.

The international community should push for a pause in the fighting so humanitarian agencies can give civilians and non-combatants in the conflict zones the help they need. It should also ensure that relief and reconstruction efforts are civilian-led, empower displaced communities to determine their own priorities and extend to that large IDP majority that is outside government camps.  

“This crisis ultimately presents an opportunity to reinforce moderate secular voices”, explains Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. “But creating the environment for those voices depends not on short-term military successes against jihadi combatants, but on a sound legal infrastructure that extends constitutional rights, the writ of the state and the laws of the land to all parts of NWFP”.