Pakistani Exodus Wreaks New Hardships

May 10, 2009, TAKHT BHAI, Pakistan — -- As many as 150,000 Pakistanis fled their homes in the Swat Valley today, taking advantage of a lull in the fighting to leave in any way they could -- walking over the mountains, hanging off the sides of local jingle trucks, sitting on top of buses.

The exodus added to the hundreds of thousands of people who have escaped three districts north of the capital in the last week and a half, but these were the first people who managed to leave after the fighting began in Swat earlier this week.

"The Taliban had captured the town ... The fighting was intense so we left everything and got ourselves out," said Muhammad Amin as he arrived from his home in Mingora, Swat's main city, in Takht Bhai. "There is no water, no gas, there is nothing -- no power, no vegetables, no milk, and people are hungry."

Not everyone has managed to leave Mingora, residents say, but anyone who could got out today. The Pakistani army is reinforcing the 15,000 soldiers currently battling in Swat, and hints that now that most of the population has left, it can step up its campaign, especially in the populated areas.

"We want to separate the population from the militants," said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the military's chief spokesman. "The more the civilians leave, it will be better for the military."

That is because previous operations in Swat have caused civilian casualties, and residents fleeing Swat insist the military has targeted them as much as the militants.

Eight-year-old Shaista knows far too well the danger of trying to leave the war zone as the military fights. She arrived in the Mardan District Headquarters Hospital late last week. She and her family had been walking from their home in Mingora. Her mother and two of her sisters didn't make it. An errant army bomb killed all of them, her uncle said.

"We were leaving with other people, and a lot of people died," Shaista said.

Her uncle hadn't worked up the courage to tell her that her father had died as well.

As bad as the situation is for Swat residents living in and around Mingora, those living north of the city are faring much worse.

"The people are besieged," according to Zubair Torwali, a human rights activist from Swat who spoke to friends in Upper Swat today. In areas such as Bahrain and Qalam, he said, the military has completely shut off the roads and is pressing on Taliban strongholds. "There is a shortage of food, vegatables. All the stores have closed down. And the only food delivered in the last few days -- 40 bags of flour -- were stolen by the Taliban yesterday."

Up until now the military has focused on air power, which has caused civilian casualties but are effective outside of cities. In the last 24 hours, U.S.-made Cobra helicopters targeted militant training camps, according to the army, killing 180 to 200 Taliban fighters. One soldier died in the same time.

The numbers are difficult to verify due to limited access to the Swat Valley by journalists.

But the humanitarian challenge might be larger than the military one. Helping the people living in tents, eating government or NGO food, waiting and not knowing what will happen to their homes -- that is what may determine the long-term outcome of the war, analysts say.

At the Jalala camp in Mardan today, one of the first camps on the road out of Swat, there are 8,500 people living in tents. There is no room for more; they are directed to other camps hurriedly being built in the area. But thousands more will try and get in the coming day, and there is always a risk of disease, and there's always tension right below the surface -- on Friday desperate residents stole food from U.N. trucks, and police beat them in response.

If the newly arrived residents of the camps do not believe the government is helping them, the Taliban will likely be able to exploit government vacuums, as it has in the past.

"There are no military solutions in counterinsurgency. You have to provide lasting security. You have to provide government services. You have to provide economic security and aid. You have to defeat this ideological extremism with something that offers people security and hope," says Anthony Cordesman, an ABC News consultant and the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If you can't make this an integrated civil-military approach, you can win every battle and you can still lose the war."

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, on an extended trip to Washington D.C. and New York, said the government understood how important caring for the diplaced was.

"The government must demonstrate it's capable of helping these people," he said in a statement. "It is not just a humanitarian issue. It is a security one as well."