A billboard on the verge of a country lane that glides through the wheat fields of North West Frontier province offers a hopeful vision of the future – a modern, two-storey residence advertising a smart new housing scheme. But the field behind the billboard presents a darker but truer picture of what this corner of Pakistan has become: the overflow of a battle zone.
Instead of smart new houses, the building site is filled with rows of newly pitched tents where desperate, dispossessed people, full of tales of civilian casualties and abuses at the hands of black-turbaned Taliban fighters, have come to seek refuge.
Among them is Imran Khan, a 24-year-old textile worker who fled the Swat valley two days ago after a stray army shell landed near their house, injuring several relatives. "Windows, doors, everything, was blown in," he says.
Abandoning the modest possessions they hold dear – cattle, crockery and clothes – the family stumbled through the fields on foot, dodging Taliban checkposts and a government curfew, before reaching a bus that carried them to safety. Now they are looking for a new home amid the rows of green UN tents, which are already turning into mini-ovens under the morning sun. Behind him a clutch of burka-clad women squat under an awning; a few dare to lift the veil to fan their faces.
Helicopter gunfire
Fear has followed them from Swat. Asked if he favours the army drive against the Taliban, Khan glances over his shoulder as he mumbles a few words. Sympathisers of the militants are everywhere, a neighbour whispers. Moments later a helicopter buzzes overhead and a crowd of men follow its progress with craned necks. Many people have died under helicopter gunship fire, they say.
The camp, Sheikh Shehzad, is on the edge of Mardan, a garrison city once famous for its soldiers and its sweets. Now it is the hub of a refugee crisis and has acquired a buzzing, edgy air.
From here, trucks filled with troops, and heavy loaders bearing tanks, leave the headquarters of the Punjab Regiment and trundle up the mountains towards the districts of Buner, Dir and Swat, where battle is raging. In the opposite direction, down the slope, comes a flood of humanity thrown up by a growing military confrontation that is quickly consuming the province.
Yesterday army jet fighters attacked Taliban positions around Mingora, where the army claimed to have killed another 80 militants. The Taliban, dug into rooftop positions around the town, are fighting back hard.
With the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, announcing a major military ground offensive last night, thousands more residents took advantage of a lull in the curfew to head towards Mardan. Some bypassed the city and headed toward a recently completed motorway linking North West Frontier province with Lahore in the south. Supposed to herald an economic revival for a neglected province, the smooth road has become a six-lane escape route.
But most stay around Mardan, where the figures are staggering. The provincial government estimates that 500,000 people will flee Swat, which, added to the 550,000 people already displaced by two years of fighting across the tribal belt and Frontier province, makes the region home to the world's second largest displacement crisis after Darfur.
"We are ringing the big alarm bell," says the UNHCR's Killian Kleinschmidt. The refugee agency's provisions for funding and supplies had been "exploded" by the new fighting, he says. "The international community needs to realise this is becoming one of the major displacement crises in the world. The needs will be enormous, so we need to plan. We need money now for what's going to happen through the summer."
The strain is already showing at the Mardan TB hospital, a colonial-era facility built by a Danish missionary in 1907, that is now home to one of 12 registration centres. Hundreds of men crush against the windows of a long room, shoving their identity cards through small gaps in a mesh wall, towards a row of local officials trying to note their details.
As the day wears on tempers soar, and at lunchtime about 30 villagers break through a side door, brushing past the undermanned police and swarming towards the desks of the registration officials. "Total chaos," says a man brandishing a walkie-talkie who is monitoring the situation for one of Pakistan's many intelligence agencies.
The deluge of displaced villagers will not necessarily mean sprawling, African-style refugee camps. Pashtuns, famous for their hospitality, have absorbed the brunt of the crisis until now. Just 93,000 of the 550,000 previously displaced live in camps; the remainder are crammed into the homes of friends or relatives.
Strained hospitality
The Swatis, who come from the same Yusufzai sub-tribe as the people of Mardan, are particularly well connected – of the 145,000 people displaced by last year's fighting, just 45 families ended up in tents. "These people are basically our cousins. We don't call them refugees. This is why we haven't faced a great crisis until now," said Javed Hassan, the deputy district officer for Mardan.
But the sheer size of the latest influx is likely to strain even ancient bonds of hospitality. So far 3,000 people from Swat, Dir and Buner have registered in camps, and the numbers are rising fast.
Dilawar Khan was an attendant at the Swat museum until last year, when the Taliban exploded a bomb at its door. "They said that the museum artefacts were un-Islamic," he notes wryly.
Now the Buddhist relics have been shifted to Islamabad and Khan is living in a four-room house with 45 other people. He has now applied for a place in a camp. "It's not nice here," he admits. "We can't live like that for long."
In a plush residential neighbourhood a family of 10 from Buner, which has borne the worst of the fighting till now, is squatting in a half-finished house. Fourteen-year-old Behroz Khan is in a deep slumber, unbothered by a swarm of flies around him – with just a couple of beds, the male family members are forced to sleep in shifts.
"We're hoping this will just be for a couple of months," says his brother, Sher Baz, a labourer who appears dazed by his suddenly changed circumstances. With no bathroom or running water and little food, it isn't easy, he says. But he points to the family's attempt at normality – a plastic jug of flowers beside a builder's wheelbarrow.
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