Floods have now receded, leaving a trail of devastation behind. Deep scars of this disaster would take years to heal. Although relief phase is yet to end but concomitant to that more arduous phases of early recovery and rehabilitation can't afford any delay. The camp life ordeal of affectees would soon get over yet their suffering would only change its form as they return to their uprooted abodes.

Early recovery typically requires rapid assessment that may help initiating a transition from life saving to life sustaining activities in the affected areas. This phase entails issues like resettlement, livelihood restoration, rebuilding of basic infrastructure and planning for effective rehabilitation phase. The major challenge in this phase would be the magnitude of physical disaster. The scale of mammoth challenge can be gauged from the damage data. According to NDMA's update of 23rd December, over 1.9 houses are damaged in the country. Sindh province appears to be the worst hit accounting for over 1.1 million damaged houses.

Estimates of infrastructure such as roads, bridges, government offices, culverts do not appear in this report. However, various other reports provide information on these aspects. A report of UNESCO puts the number of damaged schools to 10,000 that corresponds to 1.5 to 2.5 million students affected. Punjab government's initial estimates reckon the damages to the tune of Rs67 billion. Website of PDMA Sindh shows staggering damage estimate of Rs446 billion.

Sector-wise breakup shows housing and agriculture as the worst-hit sectors in Sindh with estimates of Rs134 and 122 billion respectively. Secretary Industries Department of Sindh has confirmed that 67 industrial units in Sindh have been damaged. Similarly the Sindh Agriculture Department estimates agriculture losses at 102 billion rupees. A report of the UNOCHA on 10th August mentioned that 281 bridges and 283 roads were affected in KPK. Balochistan fretfully decried underestimation of its damages. In the long and short, volume of damages is mind-boggling and that explains the lurking ramifications of the bumpy road to rehabilitation. Putting together federal cabinet was informed that the colossal losses are estimated to US$ 43 billion, nearly 25% of the nominal GDP of Pakistan.

Early recovery in the affected areas would demand greater focus on agriculture and its extended strands of livelihood. Since most of the affected areas, specially in Punjab and Sindh, have their economy embedded in agriculture, immediate attention is required to secure winter sowing, mainly wheat that guarantees staple diet for millions of households. Any laxity in this would precariously push the rural economy and livelihood to the brink of collapse that may eventually culminate into a perilous social chaos. To avert this risk, government will have to work on a war-footing mainly for dewatering of submerged swathes, repairing field channels and regulators and mobilising seed, fertilizer and other inputs.

Paucity of supplies would skyrocket prices, initially of inputs and subsequently of commodities. Efficient management of winter crop would partially assuage the miseries for affectees as the local economy would get a shot in the arm with good harvest. This would bring respite for the edgy government and rehabilitation phase would also become less turbulent.

Rehabilitation phase is targeted to restore life to pre-disaster stage. This stage has to focus both on individual affectees and public services. Many experts of disaster management consider rehabilitation as an opportunity of better rebuilding through ameliorated planning, infusing socio-economic reforms, redefining imperatives of rural economy and reconstructing infrastructure as disaster-resistant and environmentally sustainable.

Rebuilding major infrastructure and reshaping socio-economic vista require meticulous planning and a turbocharged institutional array to make this transition wrinkle-free. The Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank has also indicated in its report that Pakistan has a unique opportunity to introduce land and irrigation reforms for long term political and economic gains. The report suggests that the disaster also presents an opportunity to redress or to begin to redress, the long-standing land rights issue related to powerful landlords and indebted tenants in areas like Balochistan, Sindh and Southern Punjab.

Likewise, better land use planning can help rebuilding environmentally sustainable human settlements. Stemming from shear lack of land use planning, villages and towns in Pakistan have become breeding grounds for social strains and environmental nightmares. Unbridled sprawl of villages and towns have completely disregarded the fundamentals of development. Over the years major infrastructure schemes were implemented in the flood prone areas.

A vicious web of private dykes, illegal irrigation channels and other imprudent creatures was recklessly allowed to sneak into the flood plains. How this environmentally myopic development multiplied the damages need to be delved. Rehabilitation phase is a heaven-sent opportunity to rectify these gaffes. Land reforms, especially judicious allocation of katchha land and recovering illegally occupied tracts of riverine forest would be the best harvest of this worst disaster.

The insurmountable challenge, however, would be convincing the ruling elite to let it happen unhindered. Since the fragile democratic dispensation stands on the crutches of unscrupulous landed aristocracy, such reforms look like a distant dream. Otherwise erasing social imbalances would provide bedrock foundation to democracy in Pakistan.

The major challenge in rehabilitation would be resource mobilisation. Ever bulging security cost has hemorrhaged the cash-strapped government from its residual liquidity. According to newspaper reports the federal budget has recently been defaced by major changes into defense and development allocation. The former has been allocated additional Rs110 billion and the later has been drained by Rs73 billion, leaving development kitty in pallor.

Council of Common Interest announced a compensation of Rs100,000 for every affectee family but the provinces are too impoverished to afford this. The Advisor for Planning and Development in Sindh has already conceded that the slim purse of the province can't afford 190 billion rupees required for the purpose. The international aid response had been sluggish due to medley of reasons. The UN has launched "Pakistan Floods Emergency Response Plan" seeking US$ 2 billion.

The plan aims to provide humanitarian relief and early recovery assistance to up to 14 million people through 483 projects. The anemic treasury needs aid injection to foot the rehabilitation bill that would run into several billion dollars. There is a need of massive public sector investment to reinvigorate the caved-in economy in the affected areas.

This investment, however, should not be restricted to dole outs; it should rather follow the 'New Deal' paradigm of socio-economic recovery of US after Great Depression in 1930s. President Roosevelt declared it a peacetime emergency and established Federal Emergency Relief Administration that pumped money in "work relief" operations. Huge projects of roads, bridges, schools and other public works were rolled out that generated jobs for 4 million citizens.

Such a model would proffer multiple benefits of rebuilding public services, rejuvenating the tormented local markets and creating much needed employment for affectees. Creating exclusive small and medium enterprise corridors in urban areas fueled through soft loans would also help affectees to recuperate from crisis. In presence of heavy debt servicing and ballooning defense expenditure, little is left for public sector development, which complicates the dilemma of civilian governments. Considering these harsh realities, rehabilitation phase immediately requires an all encompassing master plan before rolling out muddled development schemes. The plan may comprise short term, medium term and long term targets coupled by a strategy to mobilize resources and efficiently investing them to achieve strategic socio-economic gains.

The fact that the unscrupulous, with the connivance of powerful, are unabatedly plundering the money of small deposit-holders is both shocking and painful. The deposit holders get negligible returns on their savings, while the banks are earning mark-up between 12 to 18 percent from borrowers -- this is the worst kind of exploitation one can think of. Even the governments -- federal and provincials -- borrow funds at exorbitant rate of nearly 14 percent from private banks. Nowhere in the world such a wide spread of earning is available to banks -- adding insult to injury they call it profit and loss sharing. One wonders what the regulator, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), is doing.

The influential overstate the costs of projects with the connivance of approvers -- thus siphoning off more than their equity in the very beginning. After earning profits, they engineer default and get their units declared as sick. The banks settle loans by recovering a negligible percentage of total outstands writing off the balance.

The losers are deposit-holders and shares holders -- both profitability and liquidity suffer. Strangely, the beneficiaries are also not taxed for remissions of principals and interest. Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) disallows provisions of write-offs in the hands of banks but never bothers to tax the real beneficiaries of remissions.

During the last three years, certain industrialists got relief of Rs6.8 billion in the form of loan write-offs from the government-owned bank alone. This was revealed by the Minister of State for Finance in May this year while answering a question posed by a member of National Assembly to confirm the amount of written-offs by NBP during the period between January 2007 to September 2009.

Shockingly, the FBR did not tax these remissions as business benefit, causing loss of billions of rupees to the national exchequer. Interestingly, the names of beneficiaries of loan write-offs disclosed by Ms. Hina Rabbani Khar included influential business houses owned by politicians or their close relatives. None of them has declared insolvency after write-offs.

The State Bank of Pakistan, during a suo motu case before the apex court has admitted that financial institutions wrote off Rs256 billion loans from 1971 to 2009. During the self-acclaimed transparent era of Musharraf-Shaukat, loan write-offs in just seven years (2000-2006) crossed the figure of Rs125 billion, whereas in the much-publicised corrupt eras of elected governments (1985-1999) it was just Rs30 billion. This comparison speaks for itself and does not require any further comments.

Though plundering and looting of money of deposit holders of banks started soon after nationalisation, but during the Musharraf-Shaukat era, an unholy alliance of bankers, businessmen-cum-politicians and bureaucrats devised an amnesty scheme to get the benefit of write-offs. Parliament became a party to it by inserting an exemption clause in Income Tax Ordinance 2001 through Finance Act 2004 providing non-taxation of benefits derived by them.

These crafty beneficiaries of loan write-offs shifted funds worth billions of dollars outside Pakistan, especially to Switzerland. It is possible to retrieve the looted funds if the government, under Article 25(1) of the Avoidance of Double Taxation Treaty with Switzerland, seeks information regarding Pakistanis maintaining accounts in the Alpine State as has been done by many countries in recent months.

Table A depicts the cumulative position of the non-performing loans and advances of banks and non-banking financial institutions from 1982 to 2009, which has been compiled from their published Annual Accounts. This shows not only the quantum of non-performing loans, but lack of political will to recover billions of rupees of deposit-holders when the creditors are in possession of securities and through introduction of a simple foreclosure law, assets of debtors can easily be liquidated to recover the dues.

Way back in 1996, taking suo motu notice under Article 189 of the Constitution of Pakistan, the apex court vowed to make authoritative pronouncement that "would eliminate the chances of misusing the laws for siphoning of public money" There is, however, no track what happened to that public interest litigation case -- it appears from the recent proceedings that the case is still pending even after a lapse of 14 years. The said public interest litigation originated from a reference filed by then President, late Ghulam Ishaq Khan against Rao Rasheed Ahmad (a PPP MNA), who, as a member of loan write-off committee, blatantly ordered to write off a loan of his wife. There have been many such examples where the rich and mighty, using political influence, managed to plunder the savings of the have-nots (small depositors) in a shameless manner. Unfortunately, the process continues unabated till today.

In 2000, the then Chief Executive, Pervez Musharraf, promulgated two ordinances to initiate the process of sale of 868 sick units through the Corporate Industrial Restructuring Corporation (CIRC) in consultation with the five nationalised banks that had claims of Rs107 billion against them. The CIRC was to take over these assets from the government owned banks and financial institutions at their book value and in return the government was to issue bonds to these banks at the time of privatisation of the unit or after three years of take-over, whichever was earlier. The bonds having 5-year maturity period carried a profit fixed by the federal government from time to time in accordance with State Bank rates. The banks and financial institutions used the bonds as their liquidity.

The CIRC was abolished in 2006 under the "sunset clause" of its ordinance. Banks were then privatised and beneficiaries of the process were buyers and not the public -- when banks were government-owned loans were extended imprudently and after recoveries through securitization benefits were passed onto private parties.

The new owners made billions as banks were sold at discounted prices and money realised from so-called privatisation was not used for external debt retirement but for the benefits of rulers. In the entire process, the country lost billions of rupees. The nation also suffered revenue losses of Rs120 billion as bad debts written off by the banks under the SBP's amnesty scheme enjoyed tax exemption. In 1990, the Auditor General of Pakistan issued a detailed audit report questioning the authority of Board of Revenue to issue administrative instructions for allowing bad debts. It is quite understandable how the Board of Revenue and SBP, in the presence of this audit report issued further concessions to the borrowers and banks.

It is an undeniable fact that landed aristocrats and businessmen, state functionaries and corrupt bankers joined hands to deprive this nation of billions of rupees. The responsible officials of SBP and FBR should be summoned by the apex court to explain who had asked them to issue "administrative instructions" in gross violation of law for writing off loans giving tremendous tax benefits to beneficiaries. This would reveal the modus operandi under which public money was fraudulently pocketed. Public money should be recovered and exemplary punishment be awarded to their treacherous facilitators and abettors in this crime.

Makeshift bazaars selling relief and other goods outside the camps for Afghan refugees dotting the landscape in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), now renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Mianwali district in Punjab has been a familiar sight for the people of Pakistan for almost three decades.

Now such bazaars have cropped up close to the relief camps and food and non-food distribution centres for internally displaced persons (IDPs) made homeless by natural and man-made calamities in Pakistan. Militancy, military operations, earthquakes and floods have uprooted millions of Pakistanis and forced them to live in camps not only in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, but also in Sindh, Punjab, Azad Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). Dislocated from their homes and familiar surroundings of their villages and towns, most of these IDPs are now dependent on donations and support from the government and donors and are vulnerable to exploitation.

The makeshift bazaar outside the Jalozai Camp near Pabbi in Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been in existence for years. Known as the Mohajir Bazaar (Refugees' Bazaar), it emerged when Jalozai was a huge and sprawling camp for Afghan refugees and even catered to the needs of Pakistani villagers living in the area. Due to reports that Jalozai Camp was serving as a hideout for militants including the Afghan Taliban, it was closed and Afghan refugees were repatriated to Afghanistan or relocated to other camps. But the closure was temporary as the camp was revived to accommodate the IDPs from Pakistan's Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber tribal agencies and subsequently from Swat and rest of Malakand division.

At the Jalozai bazaar, men sold and bought surplus food rations that the Afghan refugees and the Pakistani IDPs had received as donation. Flour, vegetable ghee and high-energy biscuits were on sale and so were blankets, water-proof plastic sheets and other non-food items. Yaseen Khan, displaced from Bajaur's Mamond area, said they received food items and nothing else and were, therefore, constrained to sell some of the rations that his family could spare to make money for buying household goods including clothes and shoes, particularly for the children. "We need money as we have none. We sell whatever we can spare," he remarked as he sat on the ground selling things that his family had received as donation.

Both the sellers and buyers are mostly poor and needy. The sellers cannot make much money from their small roadside business and the buyers purchase things in the hope of selling these at some profit in bigger towns and cities. One such buyer is Hazrat Bilal, barely 12-years old who was seated at his small footpath stall near the General Bus Stand on the Grand Trunk Road in Peshawar. From a buyer, he has now become a seller. Several other people, mostly teenagers, have also set up makeshift stalls because this is the right location for running such a business. Nearby are the big stores and also the distribution centre where the IDPs receive food and non-food items. Many of them want to sell there and then instead of paying transportation costs to carry the things home. Buyers swarm the place and they in turn sell whatever they can at roadside stalls outside the busy General Bus Stand where thousands of passengers arrive and depart round-the-clock.

Hazrat Bilal, a smart shopkeeper despite his young age, sold tea leaves, cooking oil, biscuits and even chocolates. The names of USAID, WFP and other donors were prominently written on the tins of cooking oil and other donated goods. The donors had also printed the sign, "Not for sale" on the tins and packets to stop the sale and misuse of the food items. However, it made no difference as the donated items were openly being sold. According to Hazrat Bilal, the only check on them were the police, who demanded payment of Rs30 to 40 each from him and other stall-holders not for selling donated goods but for occupying the footpaths and the road pavements and hindering traffic. "If we don't pay the cops, what will they eat?" remarked Hazrat Bilal with a chuckle.

The small pack of chocolate on sale cost Rs20 and the bigger one Rs30. Hazrat Bilal said he and his father bought the smaller pack from the IDPs for Rs11 or 12 and made profit of eight to nine rupees on each pack. It was strange to find out that the foreign donors had sent chocolates instead of something useful for the IDPs, who thought they couldn't afford the luxury and would be better-off selling it to make some money and use it to buy items of essential use. Another interesting observation was that Hazrat Bilal and most other sellers of relief goods were Afghan refugees. They were buying these goods from Pakistani IDPs and then selling to needy Pakistanis. Having been involved in the business of selling and buying relief goods for years, the Afghan refugees are able to do a better job in earning their livelihood in this manner.

This kind of business is bound to flourish now that Pakistan is receiving donated food and non-food items for its flood-hit citizens. The sellers and buyers are again mostly poor and needy people barely able to make both ends meet. Big traders, government officials and those running non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and involved in distribution of relief goods have much greater chances of making money. More money-making opportunities become available in the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase. Pakistan, it seems, would remain involved for years now in rebuilding its destroyed infrastructure of roads, bridges, canals, schools and health outlets and enabling its citizens to reconstruct their houses.

Pakistan has suffered from both natural and man-made disasters in recent years and there seems to be no end to its woes. In fact, a new tragedy occurs before the country is able to get respite from the previous one. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Pakistanis, resilient and strong believers in fate, are now being referred to by some commentators as the bravest nation in the world.

Compared to other countries, Pakistan's share of troubles has been on the high side in its 63 years history after winning freedom from British colonial rule in 1947. Most occurred due to flawed political policies pursued by authoritarian regimes. Pakistan's ongoing travails were triggered by the Saur Revolution in neighbouring Afghanistan in April 1978 and the subsequent Soviet military intervention in December 1979 to sustain the unpopular Afghan communist regime in power. The fallout of the Afghan conflict affected every aspect of life in Pakistan as it was the headquarters of the US-backed Afghan mujahideen fighting the occupying Soviet Red Army.

The country started suffering from the so-called 'Kalashnikov and heroin culture' as guns and drugs from war-ravaged and lawless Afghanistan were smuggled to Pakistan to meet the demands of the local market and also for onward delivery to other countries. Up to five million Afghan refugees also crossed over to Pakistan to not only put a burden on the country's inadequate resources but also become a factor in its politics, economy and culture. Around 1.8 million of those refugees are still living in Pakistan and could be found in all four provinces and even Azad Kashmir.

Migration made life miserable for the Afghan refugees and also created problems for the host country. Though the Afghan refugees under a tripartite agreement between the Afghan and Pakistan governments and the UNHCR are required to be repatriated by the new deadline of 2013, one is not sure if this could happen due to the escalating conflict in Afghanistan and on account of the fact that many Afghans are now categorised as 'economic refugees' unwilling to return to their homeland. The prolonged stay of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan is also a story of exploitation and vested interest profiting from human misery.

The fallout of the Afghan conflict on Pakistan became bigger and costlier since the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Pakistan's society was further radicalised and the military operations by the country's security forces against local and foreign militants hiding in Fata and the adjoining settled districts caused unprecedented displacement of people. The militants, linked with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, retaliated with terrorist attacks including suicide bombings in Pakistan's cities. The long and porous Durand Line border between Afghanistan and Pakistan enabled the militants, both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and those from likeminded groups, to easily infiltrate the two countries and come to the aid of each other while launching attacks and defending their sanctuaries.

As the Afghan conflict is unlikely to end any time soon and the situation in Pakistan cannot become stable as long as Afghanistan remains destabilised, the miseries of the Afghan refugees and the internally displaced persons (IDPs) in both countries would continue for the foreseeable future. The former Soviet Union and the United States of America, two superpowers with imperialist designs, are primarily responsible for the death and destruction in Afghanistan and Pakistan brought upon common people who had no say in the decision-making that led to the conflict in the region.

As if the abovementioned man-made disasters weren't enough, Pakistan was hit in recent years by periodic natural tragedies. The earthquake of October 2005 in Pakistani Kashmir and Hazara region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa killed up to 80,000 people and caused widespread destruction and displacement. Five years later, the country has yet to fully rehabilitate the earthquake affected communities and rebuild their destroyed houses or revive the communication, health and education infrastructure due to lack of resources and mismanagement. Only 49 percent work on rebuilding the infrastructure in Hazara has been completed.

This task would be delayed further as Pakistan is now confronted with the even bigger challenge of rehabilitating the affectees of the floods that struck on July 29, 2010 in northwestern parts of the country and was causing displacement and suffering in the southern Sindh province even two months later. Affecting 20 million people, including 12 million needing urgent humanitarian assistance, the floods have caused so much damage that Pakistan would need foreign assistance for years to stay afloat. Flood-hit communities would now be at the mercy of the government functionaries and donors and, as so often happens in such situations, their misery would be exploited by unscrupulous elements.

Within a period of less than 15 months, the people of Pakistan have suffered two record displacements. Until the 2010 floods, the largest displacement in Pakistan's history was the one in the early summer of 2009 when military operations and militancy in Swat and rest of Malakand division in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa caused unprecedented exodus of people. By the first week of May 2009, the influx of IDPs was so quick and big that it was described by the UN officials as the fastest major displacement in the world.

The authorities in Pakistan failed to anticipate the level of displacement and were, therefore, caught unawares. Not much preparation was made to cater to the needs of even half a million IDPs projected to abandon their homes as a result of the military action in Buner, Lower Dir and Swat. There would have been an unmanageable humanitarian crisis had the people of Mardan and Swabi districts, and also of Peshawar, Charsadda and Nowshera, not opened their doors and hearts to the IDPs and shared whatever they had with their uprooted Pakhtun kith and kin. The government was neither prepared nor equipped to take care of such a large number of displaced people. The situation also didn't get out of control as the IDPs were able to return home within a reasonable period of time due to the timely completion of the military operations in the targetted area. Having been made to sacrifice so much, the discontentment among the IDPs could have reached alarming levels had they remained stuck in the camps or in somebody else's home for a long time.

There was controversy at the time about the exact number of IDPs. Doubts were expressed about the figures provided by the provincial government through its information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain as it was felt the numbers were being jacked up to claim more federal government funds and the attention of international donors. Major General Nadim Ahmad, head of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) who was entrusted with the task to coordinate and spearhead the relief and rehabilitation work for the IDPs, pinpointed a few anomalies by claiming that the number of displaced persons in Dargai and Palai camps in Malakand Agency was certainly not 100,000 as claimed. He felt duplication took place while registering IDPs at certain places and that old-time Swat and Malakand residents living in Peshawar, Mardan and other districts had got themselves registered as recently displaced persons. This was obviously done to claim the relief goods being provided to the IDPs and it certainly amounted to taking away the rightful share of the deserving people.

If one were to believe the ANP-PPP coalition government in Peshawar, the number of IDPs following the military action had crossed 3 million. But unlike the 1980s and 1990s when the West and its allies elsewhere in the world mounted a big and sustained relief campaign for the Afghan refugees in a bid to strengthen the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, there was little hope of getting the needed assistance for the Pakistani IDPs.

This was evident from the initially poor response to the UN Appeal for emergency international assistance for the IDPs. The UN appealed for $ 543 million to cover the cost of looking after the needs of 1.5 million IDPs for the six-month period ending December 2009. Until the end of May, it had received $ 88 million only constituting 16 per cent of the appeal. Though the response to the appeal for donations improved subsequently, the needs too kept rising with the displacement of more people and extension of the zone of conflict to new fronts in tribal areas such as South Waziristan, Orakzai and Kurram.

There was certainly a donor fatigue and it was also not the first time that Pakistan was standing in the queue seeking international assistance. Besides, the IDPs' issue wasn't a natural calamity but was a man-made disaster as an unprecedented number of people were driven from their homes due to excessive bombing by jet-fighters and gunship helicopters and indiscriminate shelling by long-range artillery guns.

Very few opinion-makers questioned the military tactics that were employed to defeat an insurgency fuelled by religious slogans and local grievances, including the unresponsive system of justice and governance. Not many were asking the question whether this was the proper way to tackle a shadowy enemy that operated as a guerilla force, was committed and battle-hardened and was familiar with the terrain. Perhaps there could have been better ways to win the hearts and minds of the people while pursuing counter-insurgency operations.

The military's inability to kill or capture top Taliban leaders and commanders and the provincial government's decision to announce head-money for the Swat Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah and his 20 comrades also raised questions about the lack of good intelligence needed for mounting effective counter-insurgency campaigns. Indeed the media blackout imposed by the armed forces enabled it to portray only one side of the story and put a lid on reports of civilian casualties, extra-judicial killings and human misery. This policy also created doubts about the claims of battleground achievements made by the military and fuelled rumours.

The IDPs, who were overwhelmingly farmers, were found lamenting the loss of their wheat crop that needed harvesting, the ripened peaches, plums, apricots and other fruits that couldn't be picked, and the precious buffaloes, cows, goats and poultry that were left behind. In fact, many IDPs risked their lives and travelled back to their villages in Swat, Buner and Lower Dir to harvest their wheat crop, tend to their orchards and tobacco crop, and bring out some of their cattlehead.

While the government was finding it difficult to cope with the situation arising from the displacement of so many people, not much attention was paid to the thousands of people trapped in the war zone without having access to food, water, electricity, medicines and other necessities of life. The army slowly began sending food supplies to the blockaded villages and to towns such as Mingora, but the affected people complained that the demand was higher than the goods that were supplied. Ten-fold increase in prices of essential commodities was reported from the war zone, where medical supplies ran out and doctors fled for their lives.

The government tried to unburden itself of the IDPs from Bajaur and Mohmand tribal regions who had come earlier and were still staying in the old camps such as Jalozai and Katcha Garhi. However, not many agreed to return due to the uncertain situation in Bajaur Agency, where the militants after suffering losses in the previous military operation had again become active, and Mohmand Agency, which continued to experience Taliban-inspired violence and retaliatory action by the security forces. The number of IDPs before the launch of the military operations against the militants in Swat and Malakand region was almost 600,000. Most were angry that the new IDPs from Swat and Malakand got a far better deal than them.

There were almost 1.6 million IDPs in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata before the floodwaters ravaged not only these two administrative units but also rest of the country. Pakistan is now a country of IDPs in need of regular assistance for years to come.