ASMAT Ali, a student in the ninth grade in Kohat, just wants to go home.

Six years ago, the army’s operation Rah-i-Nijaat against the then nascent Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in South Waziristan forced him and his family of 12 to flee their village of Maula Khan Serai with little more than the clothes on their backs.

“It was not like the army warned us and told us to leave,” the 17-year-old said. “We left amidst the firing and the gunship helicopters and fighter jets. We ran towards the mountains, and spent some very bad days there.”

Take a look: IDPs to start returning to their areas tomorrow

And then, after a pause to reflect on just how bad things were back then, surviving in the mountains without food, water or supplies, he adds: “Those were some of the worst days of our lives.”

Eventually, Ali’s family made it to Tank, which adjoins South Waziristan, just one of what would eventually become 71,124 families — that’s approximately half a million individuals — to be registered as displaced, triggering one of Pakistan’s first major internally displaced people (IDP) crises.

The vast majority — 94 per cent, in fact — remain displaced to this day, six years later. Since 2009, 11,645 families have returned home to the areas of South Waziristan that the army and political administration have deemed fit.

Today, it’s Ali’s turn — along with his fellow residents of Maula Khan Serai, in the Sarwakai tehsil of South Waziristan. Over the next 20 days, the Fata Disaster Management Authority (FDMA) says it expects to send approximately 3,000 more families (21,300 people) home to the Sarwakai and Sararogha tehsils.

At the staging camp at Kaur Fort where Ali and I met, the first wave of IDPs was being sent back to the villages of Deeba, Danth Kach and Maula Khan Serai on Monday.

The camps sprawls out across rocky terrain, with a neat path laid out across the apparent chaos in whitewashed stones. The whitewash is a dead giveaway, even if the camouflage-print tents and large guns were not: this camp is run by the army.

IDPs choosing to return through the camp are being registered, fingerprinted, photographed, re-registered, verified and given basic hygiene and medical kits, as they snake their way through a maze of counters, tents, biometric scans and SIM card machines.

Finally, they’re given ATM cards and SIM card grants amounting to Rs25,000, financed through the government.

For some that I spoke to, the amount was a pittance: barely enough to feed their families for a month. For others, it was a fortune. As an FDMA official I spoke to put it, answering a question about why these IDPs would choose to return to a devastated homeland six years later: “These people are the poorest of the poor.”

Ali, too, was worried about the state of the home he was returning to.

“There were a few things that worried us,” he told me, of a visit he paid to reconnoitre the village in 2013. “Like the number of checkpoints and how they used to be very strict checking. And we were not allowed to leave the house at night. The rules were very strict. If you had any issues, you had to go to the army, and if the officer didn’t like you, they might even arrest you.” And now?

“There is no way to do business over there right now. We will go back and see to our houses. Everything has been totally destroyed: the houses, the fields, the shops, everything. If you go now, all you will see is destruction.”

His tale was echoed by all the IDPs I spoke to — each worried about the state of the homes they would return to. Some said their houses had been occupied by the army, others that they had been washed away by rain, and still others that they were destroyed in the fighting.

At least, Ali concedes, the TTP are not still in power — militants allied with the TTP held sway over most of South Waziristan ever since the group was first formed there in 2007.

“The Taliban were in complete control of our area. I was young then, but the system was such that you were not supposed to steal things, to spread fahashi, or to do drugs. We were supposed to go to the mosque five times a day. They said all these things, but they also used to shoot people for violations. They have shot people […] in the bazaars. Those who stole, or who did drugs, they would be beaten in public, too.”

Ali, and most of the other IDPs I spoke to, said they felt safe returning today, even if there was unease about the state of the homes they were returning to. It seems the words of Azam Tariq, a spokesperson for South Waziristan militant leader Khan Said ‘Sajna’ who threatened IDPs who returned with reprisal attacks, are nothing in comparison to the dread of having to rebuild one’s home from the ground up.

The queue in Kaur on Monday seemed to move about as slowly as the process of rebuilding a home — as the day wore on, only a few people had trickled through the complex web of red tape that defines registrations, verifications and disbursals.

But, just past three in the afternoon, having waited for about seven hours, the first returnees began to make their way to the army convoy that would take them home.

A spring in their step? Hardly. Grim-faced, they sat in their minivans and pickup trucks, waiting for army officials to finish counting them up and complete the latest re-verification of their identities.

They were aware, I’m sure, that the journey home was just the beginning.

Published in Dawn March 17th , 2015

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