Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights, Migration & Refugees

PAKISTAN: Pakhtuns Open Their Doors to Uprooted Civilians

Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, May 26 2009 (IPS) - For Pakistan’s Pakhtuns, hospitality is part of an old tradition that assures even strangers a warm welcome into their homes.

Estimates vary but between two and three million people have been displaced in Swat, Buner and Dir districts in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) by heavy fighting between Pakistan’s military and Taliban insurgents for the past three weeks.

The government has set up 17 camps for internally displaced peoples (IDPs) outside the conflict zone. But the vast majority has found shelter with their ethnic cousins in their homes or in public buildings.

There are hundreds of people still trapped in the conflict zone, according to the Washington-based Human Rights Watch who has called on the military to lift curfew, imposed on May 18, so civilians can leave.

The district of Swabi, 100 kms from Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP, has been flooded with IDPs. It borders Buner, the scene of heavy artillery shelling and aerial bombardment. There are two government-run camps for uprooted civilians that are providing shelter to 58,000 people.

Shahram Khan, the mayor of a town there with the same name, told IPS: "292,000 of the 350,000 registered IDPs are living with the local people in their homes and guest houses for the past month."

Swabi, south of Buner, is one of the NWFPs 25 districts. According to the mayor, 95 percent of its people live below the poverty line, but they have kept the famous Pakhtun tradition of hospitality alive.

It is this very tradition that saw in end-2001 remnants of the Afghan Taliban and their al Qaeda friends, who were ousted from Kabul by U.S. troops, welcomed by their ethnic cousins, the Pakhtuns in Pakistan’s tribal areas that border the NWFP.

The Pakhtuns are called Pashtuns in Afghanistan. In both countries they are divided in many tribes and clans, which have never been united but they are characterised by the use of the Pashto language and a strong traditional code of honour that includes hospitality.

"We are poor people, still we have given shelter to six people in my tiny, two-room house," says Farooq Khan, a shopkeeper in Rustam village, Swabi, some 140 kms northwest of Peshawar, with obvious pride. "I cannot afford them, but it would be against Pakhtun tradition to deny shelter to anyone!" he adds.

The IDPs in Rustam are all from Buner. "These are very trying times," Zahir Mohammad who lives in the same area told IPS in a phone interview. "We are screening Hindi movies (from India) so our guests (IDPs) can relax," he says.

The refugee families are indeed grateful for the hospitality and warmth extended to them by families, who some admit are poorer than them.

Wazir Khan of Buner district says he has offered his host money several times, but he has refused each time. "We are nine people staying at the house of our distant relative. They take extremely good care of us," he says with gratitude.

An independent group of faculty and students from the Qaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad that took a bus of relief supplies to areas around Mardan, northwest of Swabi, for refugees from Swat, Buner and Dir, observed that there were thousands of children among the refugees.

"Swat, Buner, Dir are drowning in children. Every family to which we supplied provisions had 7 or more children. One man scratched his head – he thought he had 16 or 17 kids, but could not quite remember. In the school-housed community of 300 refugees, housed at 40 per classroom, 4 kids had been born in the last 20 days, and more were on the way," wrote Pervez Hoodbhoy, nuclear physicist and peace activist, in an email.

"I play with children here … I’ll tell my father to stay here permanently. We’ll be safe from the Taliban," Zeeshan Omar, 13, from Swari Buner, told IPS over the phone from Rustam.

Ayub Khan, local mayor of Bazaar Union Council near Rustam, spoke to IPS. He says he has provided accommodation to 144 people. "We have big hearts and are ready to welcome more," his voice crackles over the phone. "We cannot deny hospitality to anyone who comes to our door seeking help. It’s the tradition of our forefathers, to respect and serve guests even if they are your enemies," he explains.

Farman Ali, 28, fled Swat on May 2 days after the military launched an operation to retake the district from the Pakistan Taliban. A tenuous peace deal brokered by the NWFP government with the Taliban in February had collapsed days earlier.

Now Ali is staying at a cousin’s house in Peshawar along with 15 other relatives from Swat. "We are overwhelmed by the hospitality," he says. "They even take us to restaurants …"

Aziz Shah, a schoolteacher here, has taken in nine people from Dir. "Our guests have upset our social set-up," he remarks. "We cannot enter our home freely due to the presence of their women. But god will bless us for what we are doing," he says, adding that in his opinion the displaced people needed support because the bloody crisis was not their fault at all.

"We are not the type who will forget the enormous kindness of our hosts. We will repay them the same way if they are ever in our situation," swears Inamullah and Jawad, two brothers from Swat, now staying with friends in Hayatabad, Peshawar.