Humanitarian agencies active in the country’s northwest have been quietly told to prepare for up to 365,000 displaced people in advance of a military offensive against North Waziristan, a senior official with an international humanitarian agency said on Monday.
The official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, was responding to a media report in a local newspaper that Pakistan will launch a military offensive against al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in the Afghan border regions.
“Humanitarian agencies operating in FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were given the heads up two weeks ago by the authorities of a possible displacement of up to 50,000 families,” he said. A similar tip-off in 2009 preceded a military offensive in neighbouring South Waziristan by about five months, he said. Other aid agencies were not immediately available for comment.
The report comes just days after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated a US demand to tackle sanctuaries for al Qaeda and the Taliban on the Afghan border. An understanding for an offensive in North Waziristan was reached when Clinton and US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen visited Pakistan last week, the report said. It quoted unidentified “highly-placed sources” as saying the air force would soften up militant targets under the “targeted military offensive” before ground operations were launched. It cited sources as saying that a strategy for action in North Waziristan had been drawn up some time ago and an “understanding for carrying out the operation was developed” during the Clinton visit. The target of any North Waziristan operation would be the most violent factions of the TTP, which has strong ties to al Qaeda, the report said.
