Bajaur Agency Tribesmen Are Still In Dilemma

Today when the whole world is celebrating the inauguration of Barack Obama as US President, people of tribal areas situated on Pak-Afghan border are still in a fix. They are still unaware as who is responsible for their plight. Thousands of people have been killed or maimed in the so-called war on terror. Thousands of people have been displaced, who are now spending their life in refugee camps.

Sakina Bibi, a confident woman in her mid-twenties with a fondness for bangles and nose rings, has spent her life in Nawagai, Bajaur Agency. In September, after the Pakistan government had launched a military operation to root out militants, she fled Nawagai with eight children, her sister-in-law, and one elder from her family. For the past four months, she has been living in Katcha Garhi, a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Peshawar.
Sakina finds it difficult to talk about why she left Nawagai – whenasked, she simply says, “bombs fell, rockets came again and again, sowe left.” Her reticence may stem from the fact that she has littlereason to ever return to Nawagai and is worried about how to settledown in Peshawar. 
“My family owns no lands,” she explains. “We used to sell fruit and vegetables on stalls so now we have nothing to return to.” Her family has twice tried to rent a small house in Peshawar, but to no avail. “The city people don’t want us living near them. They think we’re dirty and that we’re thieves. All of us are out of work, too, so I don’t know how we’d pay the rent even if we got a place.”
Like many of the other refugees from Bajaur and Mohmand agencies, Sakina is caught in limbo: between her home village of Nawagai and the city of Peshawar; between the Taliban and government security forces. She is the collateral damage of Pakistan’s war against terror, and her nightmare is currently unfolding in Katcha Garhi.

Source: dawn.com