{"id":5644,"date":"2009-05-15T19:32:37","date_gmt":"2009-05-16T03:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=5644"},"modified":"2009-05-15T19:32:37","modified_gmt":"2009-05-16T03:32:37","slug":"swats-refugee-crisis-underscores-government-incompetence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/15\/swats-refugee-crisis-underscores-government-incompetence\/","title":{"rendered":"Swat&#8217;s Refugee Crisis Underscores Government Incompetence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If there&#8217;s one thing the private sector can&#8217;t compete with a modern military on, it&#8217;s the ability to <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2009\/05\/14\/over-one-million-refugees-from-swat-valley-registered\/\">drive millions of people from their homes in a matter of weeks<\/a>. The situation in the Swat Valley is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/05\/16\/world\/asia\/16pstan.html?_r=3&#038;ref=world\">largest migration the nation has seen since the 1947 partition with India<\/a> &#8211; and while many are staying with relatives and hoping the war eventually comes to an end, others are scrambling for refugee camps. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s providing an interesting case study, for while there is no shortage of reporting on the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2009\/05\/11\/swatis-flock-to-increasingly-crowded-refugee-camps\/\">squalor and desperation of the overcrowded government IDP camps<\/a>, the Los Angeles Times is reporting on another kind of camp. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fairuse.100webcustomers.com\/thatseemsfair\/latimes0170.html\">The Hazrat Usman camp is run by a religious group and depends on private donations<\/a>. While the government camps are crowded and short on supplies, the private camp has food, medicine, and far more comfortable living conditions. <\/p>\n<p>Some express concern that the private groups, critical of the government&#8217;s invasion of the Swat Valley, will increase sympathy for the Taliban-styled factions there. Yet it is hard to imagine that the private sector&#8217;s ability to provide desperate people with food and shelter will  undermine government support more than the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2009\/05\/01\/reports-of-buner-civilian-deaths-emerge\/\">military&#8217;s indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas<\/a> in the conflict. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If there&#8217;s one thing the private sector can&#8217;t compete with a modern military on, it&#8217;s the ability to drive millions of people from their homes in a matter of weeks. The situation in the Swat Valley is the largest migration the nation has seen since the 1947 partition with India &#8211; and while many are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5644"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5647,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644\/revisions\/5647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5644"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}