In refugee aid, Pakistan's war has new front

Islamist charities and the United States are competing for the allegiance of the two million people displaced by the fight against the Taliban in Swat and other parts of Pakistan–and so far, the Islamists are in the lead. Although the United States is the largest contributor to a United Nations relief effort, Pakistani authorities have refused to allow American officials or planes to deliver the aid in the camps for displaced people. The Pakistanis do not want to be associated with their unpopular ally. Meanwhile, in the absence of effective aid from the government, hard-line Islamist charities are using the refugee crisis to push their anti-Western agenda and to sour public opinion against the war and America. Last week, a crowd of men, the heads of households uprooted from Swat, gathered in this village in northwestern Pakistan for handouts for their desperate families. But before they could even get a can of cooking oil, the aid director for a staunchly anti-Western Islamic charity took full advantage of having a captive audience, exhorting the men to jihad. "The Western organizations have spent millions and billions on family planning to destroy the Muslim family system," said the aid director, Mehmood ul-Hassan, who represented Al Khidmat, a powerful charity of the strongly anti-American political party Jamaat-e-Islami. The Western effort had failed, he said, but Pakistanis should show their strength by joining the fight against the infidels. The authorities' insistence that the Americans remain nearly invisible reveals the deep strains that continue to underlie the American-Pakistani relationship, even as cooperation improves in the fight against the Taliban, and public support for the war grows in Pakistan. Yet Islamist and jihadist groups openly work the camps. "Because of the lack of international agencies, there is a vacuum filled by actors that are Islamist and more than that, jihadist," said Kristele Younes, a senior advocate with Refugees International, a Washington group established in 1979. One of the most prominent jihadist charity groups, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, had been barred from the camps, according to Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmad, the head of the Pakistani Army's disaster management group. The group was designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council in December. Nonetheless, it set up operations in Mardan under a new name, Falah-e-Insaniyat, according to Himayatullah Mayar, the mayor of Mardan. After the order to leave the area, Falah-e-Insaniyat went underground but still appeared to be operating to some extent, Mr. Mayar said. Signs of the organizational strength and robust coffers of Islamist charities were easy to see around the camps, often in contrast to the lack of services offered by the government. For example, Al Khidmat, Mr. Hassan's group, arranged to bring in eye surgeons from Punjab to staff a free eye clinic for the displaced, offering cataract operations and eyeglasses. "Government hospitals are nonexistent here, and we are able to treat not only the displaced but the whole community," said one of the surgeons, Dr. Khalid Jamal. Meanwhile, Mr. Hassan was busy checking new temporary schools, health clinics and four ambulances on 24-hour service that Al Khidmat had set up. Every day, he said, he personally supervised the distribution of food at three different places–sometimes at a home, sometimes in a camp. So far, he said, he had covered 400 of 450 villages near the city of Swabi. Always, he said, before the food is distributed, he delivers his exhortation to jihad. By contrast, although much American aid gets through, it is not branded as American, and Pakistani authorities insist that it be delivered in a "subtle" manner, General Ahmad said. The general said he had told American officials there would be an "extremely negative" reaction if Americans were seen to be distributing aid. "I said they couldn't fly in Chinooks, no way," General Ahmad said, referring to American military helicopters. The United States, he said, was seen as "part of the problem." That is not what American officials had hoped for. At first, the exodus of people from Swat, many of whom had suffered from the brutality of the Taliban, seemed to present a chance for Washington to improve its image in Pakistan. "There is an opportunity actually to provide services, much as we did with the earthquake relief, which had a profound impact on the perception of America," Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing attended by the Obama administration's special envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, at the start of the exodus. In an effort to highlight American concern for the refugees, Mr. Holbrooke visited the camps in June, sitting on the floor of a sweltering tent and talking to people about their plight. "President Obama has sent us to see how we can help you," he said. One result of the trip was an effort to send Pakistani-American female doctors to assist women in the camps. According to the State Department, the United States has pledged $110 million for food and logistical support. In late May, the Defense Department sent several flights to Islamabad carrying ready-to-eat meals, environmentally controlled tents and water trucks. But ideas of winning back popularity with a big show of airlifts of American assistance on the scale of American earthquake relief to Kashmir in 2005 were rebuffed, and not only by the Pakistanis. American nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan discouraged high-profile deliveries of United States government aid because anti-American sentiment was too widespread and the security risk to Americans in the camps was too high, said the head of one of the groups, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. There were many Taliban in the displaced camps, and they believed the Pakistani military was fighting against them in Swat on orders from Washington, the official said. The restrictions on American assistance are clear in the camps and in villages like this one deep in the countryside around Mardan and Swabi, where Pakistani families have opened their homes to large numbers of displaced people. American officials and their consultants were barely able to move beyond the highly visible refugee camps set up along the main highway between Islamabad and Peshawar, said Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American businessman who has visited the area to help find ways to bring additional aid. "They have been almost completely neutered," he said.