Pakistan battled to provide relief for more than 1.45 million people who fled its anti-Taliban offensive, admitting the enormity of the challenge as fears grew yesterday about a lengthening crisis.
Pakistan ordered the offensive last month under huge US pressure to crush militants in the northwest, which Washington said threatened the very existence of the Muslim country and posed the greatest terror threat to the West.
As the conflict ploughs on with no end in sight, concerns are mounting about how to cope with the displaced, uprooted in what rights groups have called Pakistan’s biggest movement of people since partition from India in 1947.
Tens of thousands of people are living in government-run camps, crammed into tents in the scorching summer heat with poor sanitation, full of anger against an offensive they say stripped them of their homes and crops.
Hundreds of thousands more are staying with relatives scattered elsewhere, complicating the international relief effort to reach the massive numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
“Neither we nor the government expected this number of refugees, of IDPs. The government is doing as much as possible to give support to the families,” said Rienk Van Velzen, World Vision regional communications director.
“There is much need for the longer term ... I think it will be at least four or five weeks, if not longer [before the crisis is over],” he said.
Pakistan has appointed Brigadier General Nadeem Ahmad to head its emergency response and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has called for an international donors’ conference in Islamabad.
Pakistanti President Asif Ali Zardari was scheduled to convene a top-level meeting of government and UN officials yesterday on relief and rehabilitation efforts.
Holding talks with visiting Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay, Gilani said Pakistan was fighting the Taliban on two fronts — militarily and in trying to cope with the humanitarian crisis.
The government and civil society faced a “gigantic task” in providing relief to the displaced people, whose number was likely to swell, he said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised what she described as a “national mood change” against the Taliban in Pakistan and unveiled US$100 million in humanitarian aid for the displaced.
The new funds would be used to deliver tents, FM radios, meat, water trucks, generators and other supplies, Clinton said.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was later to announce yesterday that Canberra would provide extra aid for civilians affected by the fighting.
Rashid Khalikov, director of the UN humanitarian office in New York, warned aid workers were struggling to reach many of those who fled as the number of displaced increased with “absolutely horrible speed.”
“It’s very difficult to be prepared for one million displaced and I think it is a serious threat for any government,” he said.
NUCLEAR CONCERNS
Meanwhile, satellite photos released on Tuesday show Pakistan has expanded two sites crucial to its nuclear program as part of an effort to bolster the destructive power of its atomic arsenal, analysts at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said.
The commercial images reveal a major expansion of a chemical plant complex near Dera Ghazi Khan that produces uranium hexafluoride and uranium metal, materials used to produce nuclear weapons, an ISIS report said.
At a site near Rawalpindi, photos suggest the Pakistanis “have added a second plutonium separation plant adjacent to the old one,” the report said.
The satellite images follow confirmation from the top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, on Friday that Pakistan was expanding its nuclear arsenal.
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