The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted June 12, 2009, 9:12 am by Dan Sadowsky

Questions for Holden Basch

Holden Basch is leading our emergency response to the Pakistan IDP crisis.

This morning I talked with Holden Basch, who is leading our response to the Pakistan displacement crisis. He spent Friday in a village called Lundkwahr, speaking to displaced families to whom we'd given $45 vouchers to buy food, clothing and other essentials. It was about 9:30 p.m. local time in Islamabad when I spoke with him.

How many cash vouchers have we handed out so far?
We've distributed vouchers to about 10,000 people, mostly IDPs but also some host families. We'll distribute to the remaining 10,000 IDPs whom MC has registered next week.

The vouchers are exchanged at our distributions for bank checks that are redeemed at local banks.

Our distributions have been orderly because we first register the IDPs and provide them with vouchers to exchange at our distributions. This prevents a rush of unexpected people showing up, but in any distribution there is the possibility of chaos.

What have people been using the money for?
According to the group we talked to today, the majority bought food. The second-most mentioned items were clothing and medicine. And the third was kitchenware and local transport.

Mercy Corps is disbursing cash vouchers to families affected by the fighting between the Army and Taliban insurgents. At this distribution in the Mardan District, men are holding vouchers which are redeemed for a $45 check the next day. Photo: Holden Basch/Mercy Corps

Where are we focusing our efforts?
We're staying out of the official camps because they're getting so much attention. We're working mainly in schools, which have become sort of informal camps. And we also go to the host families, people who are taking on two, three, four families. We find them through community leaders and local organizations.

How are people faring?
Considering what they've gone through, they're managing well. But you can see tempers getting short, people are tired, some people are looking thin, beards are a bit untrimmed, clothing looks a bit worn.... It's just getting progressively harder for people, and not enough aid is getting to IDPs living outside the camps.

What are the issues for families taking shelter in schools?
One big problem is that these schools were set up to take 50-60 students a day, and now they've got hundreds of families living in them. The water tanks don't hold enough water, the pumps are broken, latrines are overflowing, so people have stopped using the latrines and are now using the school grounds for open defecation.

We don't know how long people will be there, so we don't want to go in and start digging new wells, or making permanent and dramatic changes to the school grounds. But there are pumps on wells that have broken or need repairing, or we can build separate wash stations so people aren't washing baby clothes and eating utensils in the same area. We're looking for the simplest and quickest ways to remedy the water and sanitation problems. We're working on improvements that will benefit close to 6,000 people.

Voucher distributions are segregated by gender: women collect their checks, then the men. And women only show up when no men in their household are available. Photo: Holden Basch/Mercy Corps

What's the sense of when displaced families might be able to return home?
Well for a while, people were talking about "early return," and the government was trying to encourage people to come back and saying they'd restart electricity and gas service. But there is fear that there's still a lot of Taliban hiding in the countryside, and when Pakistan Army pulls out the Taliban will return.

So we're seeing some hesitation on the part of the IDP families. They are living in unpleasant conditions. The fact that they're not going back says there's still security concerns.

Our best guess is that these families will stay until at least mid-July, but longer wouldn’t surprise us. By July the weather will start getting really hot — families from Swat are used to cooler weather — and the monsoon season will be right around the corner, so it's possible they'll decide to pack it in and try their luck back home. But we just don't know. They may just decide its better to suffer the weather than return.

Anything else you'd like to mention?
It's not easy to register 20,000 IDPs as quickly as we have under these conditions. They're hidden in houses, they're in schools, scattered in area of several kilometers in one community. And then to set up distributions for up to 3,000 people a day, at maybe five different locations, and make sure everything is orderly. The host communities have been very helpful, and our emergency-response team here deserves a lot of credit. We've been working 16-hour days, seven days a week to get it done.