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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s allies promised $224 million in aid for about 2 million people displaced by fighting against the Taliban after the government warned that the militants could exploit a failure to help.
The military launched an offensive this month in the picturesque Swat Valley and neighboring districts to stop the spread of a Taliban insurgency that had raised fears for nuclear-armed Pakistan’s future.
The United Nations has warned of a long-term humanitarian crisis and called for massive aid for about 1.5 million people displaced by this month’s offensive and about 555,000 people forced from their homes by earlier fighting in the northwest.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told the donors’ conference in Islamabad that Pakistan was issuing an urgent call for help from “all those who are committed to fighting terrorism.”
Aid for the displaced would help win the battle against the Taliban, he said.
“It would also help in ensuring that the militants don’t exploit the vulnerability of the displaced population … We have to win the hearts and minds of the people,” he said.
Minister of State for Finance Hina Rabbani Khar later told reporters donors had promised $224 million, including $110 million the United States promised on Tuesday.
That sum would go toward a flash appeal that the United Nations will launch on Friday in a bid to raise up to $600 million, she said.
NUCLEAR ARSENAL
The United States, which sees Pakistan as vital to its plan to defeat al Qaeda and bring stability in neighboring Afghanistan, has applauded Pakistani resolve to fight what some U.S. leaders have called an “existential threat” to the country.
The U.S. administration is confident that Pakistan will not use a planned sharp increase in U.S. aid to strengthen its nuclear arsenal, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs on Wednesday approved tripling U.S. economic aid to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years.
Politicians and members of the public broadly back the offensive, but support will quickly evaporate if many civilians are killed or if the displaced languish in misery.
About 15,000 members of the security forces are fighting between 4,000 and 5,000 militants in Swat, the military says.
Pakistan says more than 1,000 militants and more than 50 soldiers have been killed. The estimate of militant casualties has not been independently confirmed.
After clearing many Taliban strongholds and supply caches in Swat’s mountains, soldiers have begun battling militants in towns where many civilians are believed to be hiding.
On Thursday, soldiers were battling militants at a Taliban stronghold in a remote side valley off the main Swat valley, and in some Swat towns as well, the military said, adding that five soldiers and an unspecified number of militants were killed.
The head of the government relief operation, Lieutenant General Nadeem Ahmed, said up to 200,000 civilians were stranded in the valley and authorities might have to drop food to them from the air.
But Ahmed said “not many” civilians were left in the region’s main town of Mingora, with most people still in the valley in its northern reaches, which had been “relatively calm.”
President Asif Ali Zardari has said Swat was just the beginning and the army would next move against militants in the Waziristan region on the Afghan border.
The fighting has unnerved investors in Pakistani stocks.
The market ended 1.29 percent lower at 6,969.82 points partly because of security concerns, dealers said
Source: Reuters