The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced that about a million civilians have been forced to leave their homes in the wake of the fighting between the Pakistani Army and the local Taliban in Swat Valley.
Half of the said figure is currently being provided shelter in camps which have been set up in haste outside the valley in the troubled North-West Frontier Province, and the other half has been displaced within the valley.
In the meantime the Pakistani Army has declared that it will continue the war till the radical militia is completely defeated. If the army sticks to this threat it can then be said that since 1947 when Pakistan declared its independence the subcontinent has not seen such a massive displacement of people.
However, this new mass movement of helpless people is different from and more dangerous than the previous one. Two parameters make the situation extremely volatile and dangerous, and its aftermath could adversely affect Pakistan for a long time.
The first issue is that the displacement is taking place among the Pashtuns due to ethnic considerations. Second, it is linked largely to religious extremism.
The significance that deserves mention here is that the Pashtun ethnic group and religious extremism within the context of supporting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are intertwined. If the Pakistani government cannot speedily check this huge human catastrophe, sectarian strife between the minorities and the predominant Punjabis will intensify and could simply get out of control.
The first place that will be affected with this bitter development is Karachi, Pakistan’s largest port city.


Karachi is still suffering from the population displacement of 1947 and the ethnic group known as the Muhajirs who came from India has not yet assimilated within the powerful Sindhi community.
Karachi is pretty vulnerable more so because deep contradictions between the Pashtuns and Muhajirs have existed in the region for decades.
If we give credence to the comment by the Leader of Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) Altaf Hussain in London who on behalf of Muhajirs announced that he is willing to side with the Pakistani Army in Swat, the possibility of the war spilling over ethnic lines becomes more probable and Pakistan’s national unity and territorial integrity could be seriously undermined.
Of course, it is expected that the Pakistan government performs more vigilantly than Hussain and does not drag the war from Swat Valley to Karachi. This is a grave issue that simply cannot be overlooked. The Taliban has no calms about the bloody fighting being dragged to Pakistan’s main cities so that they can show their might in areas outside tribal regions.
What is happening in Swat Valley is not in Pakistan’s national and security interest. It is also understandable that the Pakistani Army has been pushed into the conflict due largely to US pressures. The war can still be brought under control, but if it continues there is the possibility that it would spread and get more dangerous.
On the one hand it can spread to other parts of Pakistan, on the other the US might interfere and the bloody war in neighboring Afghanistan could spread to Pakistan. Both scenarios are likely and it is only the vigilance of the government in Islamabad that can rescue the country and take the initiative for peace instead of continuing a war against its own people. For all practical reasons the new violence is in the interest of the US and its allies who have been trapped in a deepening black hole in Afghanistan.