Pakistan refugee families start to go home

Refugees who fled fighting in Pakistan's Swat Valley have been told to go home after the government said it had cleared the area of Taliban militants. The army has attacked and destroyed much of the militants' infrastructure, including weapons depots and training camps, the government claimed.

Today, the first convoy of buses carrying families from temporary camps set off for Swat. But many of the two million people who were forced out are worried about going back to Swat because of a lack of food and amenities there. Much of the infrastructure in the region including power and water supplies was badly damaged in the months of fighting. Some are worried that there are still extremists in the area because the leaders of the Swat Taliban have not been caught. But the Government said the main commander Mauluna Fazlullah was wounded.Tens of thousands of people are living in 11 official government camps, but many more are camping with relatives or in converted official buildings like schools.Top of the government’s priority list is to return the people living in temporary camps. But the displaced people must not be forced to return, the United Nations has stressed. When people have been moved from the camps, the army will begin returning people who have been living in schools and other public buildings.

The government puts the cost of emergency relief and rehabilitation of the displaced people at the equivalent of £1.5bn. Less than a quarter of that has come from Western donors, according to Pakistani officials. Pakistani television channels are running adverts urging people to donate clothes and food and there are notices in the national newspapers appealing for help for the displaced people. Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie’s Jolie-Pitt Foundation has donated $1m to a UN refugee agency organising emergency relief. General Nadeem Ahmad, who is overseeing the task of returning families home, said every family leaving the camps would get cash support from the government. He told the BBC that the operation to return the displaced was deemed feasible only once certain conditions had been fulfilled. These were that the area had been cleared of militants, explosive devices and that the region's administrative and commercial infrastructure was in place.

But if the government fails to provide for people's needs, "no-one will stand against militant extremism in the future,” one person in the town of Sultanwas, in Buner province, told the Associated Press news agency.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children