As people in two war-torn nations of Asia — Pakistan and Sri Lanka — flee recent fighting, Baptists are mobilizing to help these displaced people as best they can.
Relief workers are seeking to identify ways Southern Baptists can help some of the estimated 1.2 million people who have fled Pakistan’s Swat Valley as their country’s military inflicts heavy casualties on Taliban insurgents who control the area.
“This is being called by some the worst internally displaced person emergency in recent times,” said Francis Horton, a Southern Baptist who directs work in South Asia for Baptist Global Response, an international relief and development organization. “Field partners are in the process of assessing the needs and what is already being done or planned to be done so we can then fill the gaps and meet needs that might otherwise go unmet. We will work with them to assess what response will be most strategic.”
The United Nation’s refugee agency said May 18 that 1.2 million people from Swat and two adjoining districts in northwest Pakistan have registered as “internally displaced people,” according to the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper. Barely 10 percent, however, are living in the camps opened to accommodate them.
“It looks like the vast majority is opting out of the camps in favor of staying with relatives or taking a place on rent,” Horton said. “Somewhere around 80 percent of the displaced people are women and children.”
Pakistani authorities said May 18 more than 1,000 militants have been killed since they launched their assault on the Taliban April 26, the AFP news service reported. The government puts it own losses at 46 soldiers. The Pakistani government had signed an agreement with the Taliban in February that would allow the Taliban to implement Sharia law in the Swat Valley in return for ending their year-long insurgency. Taliban militants, however, quickly moved into surrounding districts as close as 60 miles to the capital and even made shows of force in the Karachi area, some 700 miles away.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani recently convened the country’s political parties to demand the Taliban to disarm and said the government intends to “eliminate” the threat Islamist militants pose to the nation’s sovereignty. The military said May 18 that as many as 15,000 troops were fighting about 4,000 Taliban fighters in Swat, where troops are closing in on Mingora, the capital. Pakistan President Asif Zardari said the army also will move on Waziristan, the area where the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda and Afghan insurgents are based.
The United Nations is establishing “humanitarian hubs” in Pakistan to help people outside of camps, Horton said. “We will take the field partners’ assessments and put together a response that will help people in the best way we can.”
Meanwhile in Sri Lanka, leaders of Sri Lankan Baptist Sangamaya visited a refugee camp in the wake of the war between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers. The May 11–12 visit to shelters included the distribution of supplies to about 500 families. These supplies, including water, milk and shoes, were bought with a $5,000 grant from Baptist World Aid, the relief and development arm of Baptist World Alliance.
An estimated 250,000 refugees, mainly Tamil, are in camps following the escalation of the civil war between the LTTE and the government over the past few months. The civil war first erupted in 1983 as the Tamils, who accuse the Sinhalese government of discrimination, fought for an independent state in the north and east of the island. Since the beginning of the conflict, about 70,000 people have been killed. Since January, an estimated 7,000 civilians have been killed and about 17,000 have been wounded.
Reports are that the LTTE forces have been defeated and that founder and leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who founded the rebel group in 1976, was killed May 18. (BGR, BWA)
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