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Pakistan struggles to aid displaced thousands

AFP, Islamabad
Pakistan struggled to provide relief for the 1.5 million people who have fled its antiTaliban onslaught, admitting the enormity of the challenge as fears grew yesterday about a lengthening crisis.
Pakistan ordered the offensive last month under huge US pressure to crush militants in the northwest, which Washington said threatened the very existence of the Muslim country and posed the greatest terror threat to the West.
As the conflict ploughs on with no end in sight, concerns are mounting about how to cope with the displaced, uprooted in what rights groups have called Pakistan's biggest movement of people since partition from India in 1947.
Tens of thousands of people are living in government-run camps, crammed into tents in the scorching summer heat with poor sanitation, full of anger against an offensive they say stripped them of their homes and crops.
"Life in this camp is even worse than the life of animals," said Amna Rashid, a business administration student sheltering at a camp near the town of Mardan.
"When I leave my tent, camp staff look at me as if I were a call girl. It is really dis-
gusting and painful," Rashid told AFP by telephone.
Rahim Gul, 80, said he had a small grocery in the northwest Swat valley, but his home was destroyed in the operation and he was forced to flee
"In the camps the government is killing us... I feel like vomiting because I stink so much. I wouldn't give food to a stray dog food with these utensils," Gul said.
More than one million people are staying with relatives, complicating the international relief effort to reach the internally displaced persons (IDPs).
"Neither we nor the government expected this number of refugees, of IDPs. The government is doing as much as possible to give support to the families," said Rienk Van Velzen, World Vision regional communications director.
The United Nations said that around 1.5 million people left their homes this month and registered with authorities, joining about 550,000 IDPs who fled previous bouts of fighting in the troubled northwest.
Dominique Frankefort, emergency coordinator with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said two million people would need food until at least September.
"We are catching up, if you have
200,000 additional IDPs coming in per day you cannot feed them immediately," he told AFP, adding: "There are very few non-governmental organisations and there is very little government assistance."
Pakistan has appointed a well respected military officer, Brigadier General Nadeem Ahmad, to head its emergency response and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has called for an inter -national donors’ conference.
President Asif Ali Zardari convened a top-level meeting of government and UN officials Wednesday on relief and rehabili -tation efforts.
The government and civil society faced a "gigantic task" in providing relief to the displaced people, whose number was likely to swell, Gilani said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised what she described as a "national mood change" against the Taliban in Pakistan and unveiled 100 million dollars in humanitarian aid for the displaced.
But Frankefort warned that there was only enough money to feed hungry refugees until mid-July and urged donors to step forward.
"There certainly is not enough... we are struggling, we are currently borrowing from other projects," he told AFP.