PESHAWAR: Eleven years after militancy hit Pakistan, the Foreign Office has woken up to coin a new term for around two million Fata people displaced by violence and the subsequent military operations against militants in the mountainous region, directing the disaster management authorities and departments concerned to call such people temporarily dislocated persons (TDPs) instead of internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Officials in the know told Dawn that the FO recently wrote a letter to the Fata Disaster Management Authority and Provincial Disaster Management Authority, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other state entities to substitute the term IDP with TDP.

“I don’t understand the logic and spirit behind the coining of this new term. It does not make any difference whether you call them IDPs or TDPs,” said one senior government official, who has long been dealing with the militancy-affected families of Fata.The official said the government should focus on the repatriation and rehabilitation of dislocated people instead of introducing new terms for them.

He said ironically, displacement of people began in 2007 but the FO found ‘proper definition’ for such people in 2014, which was very strange.

FO insists the term ‘IDP’ is used for people displaced due to war or occupation of their area

When contacted, spokeswoman for the FO Tasnim Aslam said the IDP was a legal term, which was used for the people displaced due to a conflict.

“These people (IDPs from Fata) have not been displaced as a result of war or occupation of their area. Our law-enforcement agencies have started action in tribal areas to re-establish writ of the government that is why affected population of Fata should be called TDPs and not IDPs,” she explained.

The spokeswoman said people had not been evacuated from tribal region due to war or occupation of their areas by force.

Security forces had begun operation in Fata in 2003 to wipe out sanctuaries of local and foreign militants, including those from Al-Qaeda and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and restore the state’s writ in tribal areas as well as in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The military action was expanded to all tribal agencies, Malakand division and other troubled parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The government had notified many tribal agencies of Fata as conflict zones. Acts of terrorism and conflict had claimed lives, according to the official statistics.

These figures show acts of terrorism and conflict have so far claimed the life of around 50,000 civilians across the country, while over 5,000 personnel of the LEAs have died in combat operations.

Besides, the government has also claimed to have killed thousands of local and foreign militants in military operations.

Evacuation of civilians from the troubled areas had begun in 2008.

According to the FDMA, the existing number of dislocated families verified by the National Database and Registration Authority is 257,355.

These families have been living in camps or rented houses since 2009 as the government has yet not de-notified their hometowns as conflict zones. Military operation in North Waziristan Agency has forced 55,183 families to flee their homes for adjacent areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Dislocated families of South Waziristan and Khyber Agency have been living in rented houses and Jalozai camp since 2009.

The United Nations Human Rights said according to the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, internally displaced persons were “persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalised violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognised border.”

Islamabad-based expert of international humanitarian law Dilawar Khan, who had served the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said it was the first time that the term ‘TDP’ was used for conflict-hit people.

He insisted the term ‘temporarily’ was used to evacuate civilians from an area for a specific period, which could be one month or six months, before they were allowed to return home.

“If the government does not give specific timeframe for the repatriation of displaced persons, then it can’t be called temporary dislocation,” he said, adding that such people had been living miserable life in tents for so many years with their fate continuing to hang in the balance.

Commenting on the FO policy statement, an analyst said, “Whatever name is given to the people forced to leave their hometowns does not make their situation any different, nor does calling them TDPs or IDPs have any meaning if they don’t know when they are returning to their homes.”

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2014