{"id":148,"date":"2009-11-08T12:40:13","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T12:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/?p=148"},"modified":"2009-11-08T12:40:13","modified_gmt":"2009-11-08T12:40:13","slug":"fleeing-from-south-waziristan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/?p=148","title":{"rendered":"Fleeing from South Waziristan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Up to 100,000 civilians have left their homes in South Waziristan, where the Pakistani army is fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda.<\/strong>
\nDr Jalal comes from the Makeen area in the north-eastern part of South Waziristan, which is inhabited by the Mehsud tribe.
\n“The situation in South Waziristan is very dangerous now.
\nThe army and the Taliban are fighting really hard. People are now leaving the area to avoid the fighting. My family and friends have already left.
\nWhile I was still there, there were dangers from everywhere – American drone attacks from the one side and the Taliban from the other. Many people were killed, including militants.
\nYou couldn’t show that you were against the Taliban, because they would kill you. But in my mind they are bad people.<\/p>\n

Difficult journey<\/strong>
\nThe winters are really harsh in Waziristan and people are trying to move out before it becomes really cold. Otherwise it might be too late. My family arrived a few days ago.
\nIt was a difficult journey as they had to travel on foot. The people of Waziristan are poor people, very few can afford proper transportation. It costs 20,000 rupees ($240, \u00a3147) to hire a vehicle. This is too much and it’s very hard for many people to pay that kind of money.
\nSo my family, along with many others, made the journey on foot. They had to overcome bomb explosions and curfews. They are with me now and everyone is fine, although a few people suffer from flu and exhaustion.
\nThere are 33 of us now in our house. It’s not a big house, but we are trying to accommodate everyone.
\nThe government has issued registration cards and every family is to receive some financial help. But it’s not enough.
\nAnd if the war against the terrorists in Waziristan continues for a long time, how are we going to keep going?
\nThe army is fighting very hard. They are the good ones and we are supporting them. I believe that they will kill all the militants.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up to 100,000 civilians have left their homes in South Waziristan, where the Pakistani army is fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Dr Jalal comes from the Makeen area in the north-eastern part of South Waziristan, which is inhabited by the Mehsud tribe. “The situation in South Waziristan is very dangerous now. The army and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149,"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcccharity.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}