Eidak village back to life after repatriation of IDPs

PESHAWAR: The Eidak village near Mir Ali town in North Waziristan has come to life again after remaining deserted for months due to the return of its displaced population in recent days, eyewitnesses said.
They said almost 90 percent of the villagers have returned home and were now busy rebuilding their lives. They are cleaning and repairing their houses and preparing to cultivate the land and send the children to school.
Eidak is both the name of the village and the Daur sub-tribe that inhabits it. A big madrassa located on the Mir Ali-Miranshah road is a known landmark in the village, but the old village is sited a bit away from the road.
The Eidak villagers were among the last people instructed by the political and military authorities to leave as they had resisted abandoning their village by arguing that they had kept the Taliban militants out of their area and won’t let them to enter in future also. Initially, the authorities allowed them to stay in Eidak but later they were shifted to a relief camp so that the houses in the village could be searched by the security forces personnel. Subsequently, they were asked to leave North Waziristan like the million or so people who had become internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Bannu and other districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
However, the authorities had always acknowledged the role played by the Eidak villagers to keep the militants out of their village and at the first opportunity they were allowed to return home when the repatriation of the IDPs began recently. The overjoyed Eidak villagers yearning for returning to their homes wasted no time to get ready and leave. Villagers said it was one of the happiest days of their life as the time spent in displacement away from the village was one of suffering.
Before the Eidak villagers were allowed to return home, the authorities had resettled a few villages in the Spinwam and Shawa tehsils in North Waziristan. However, the return of Eidak tribespeople to their village was a major event as now more IDPs from Mir Ali area would be allowed to go back to their villages that were once the strongholds of the militants. The Eidak villagers had kept the militants at bay despite earning the ire of the Taliban commanders, but the same cannot be said about the other important villages in Mir Ali area. All the retuning villages would be expected to take responsibility for keeping the militants out and it remains to be seen if they would be able to follow in the footsteps of the Eidak villagers.