Aid agencies and the Pakistani government are both failing to support people who've fled the country's military offensive against Taliban insurgents - so say Pakistani bloggers and commentators debating the unprecedented humanitarian emergency unfolding in the country's northwest.

With an estimated 2 million people displaced by fighting between the army and Taliban, and with the battleground now likely to widen to take in new areas, Pakistan is in the midst of one of the world's largest displacement crises.

Despite deploying in great numbers, international aid agencies have come under fire in parts of the Pakistani media and blogosphere, critical of what they see as slow responses, bad planning and coordination and extravagant lifestyles.

Pakistani paper Dawn says leading humanitarian agencies like the Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and International Committee of the Red Cross have responded too slowly to the displacement crisis in the Malakand region, leaving people in at least one of Pakistan's camps without adequate water and sanitation.

"Sources told this correspondent that PRCS had a state of the art emergency response unit stored at a warehouse in Peshawar, which had the capacity to provide health and sanitation facilities to 40,000 people. The unit donated by a foreign humanitarian body to the society costs $2.4 million, but it has not been utilised for the last two years," Zulfiqar Ali writes in an article on the international humanitarian community's perceived failings.

Ali's report on the Dawn website also quotes an unnamed expert who criticises the huge salaries and luxurious vehicles of the international NGO world.

As the displacement crisis has unfolded, bloggers and media outlets have prominently promoted ways for Pakistanis elsewhere in the country to help the internally displaced by donating funds, supplies or manpower to the relief effort.

Going one step further, Dawn has even set up its own relief camp for 3,953 displaced people in the Mardan district and is offering readers ways to donate money or supplies through its dedicated website "Dawn Relief".

On the Pakistan Spectator site, national organisations which it says are doing their best with very few resources are contrasted with foreign NGOs.

"The foreign-funded NGOs are simply basking over their newly found dollars and their cosmetics measures are making little impact," Muskan Hina writes.

The article also stresses that the Pakistani leadership needs to do more to make aid distribution transparent.

The Pakistani media and blogosphere are on the whole supportive of the military offensive, although blogger Kalsoom sounds a note of caution in a posting on Changing up Pakistan, which responds to editorials in the U.S. media suggesting a military victory is near - in particular a piece in the Wall Street Journal championing military successes in Mingora.

"Isn't it too soon to claim victory?" Kalsoom asks. "Although I am a major supporter of the Pakistan Army's offensive, I also do not want premature optimism to cloud our judgment of what's at stake in the long-run. We cannot allow a repeat of the past, when the Taliban's influence rose despite military campaigns," Kalsoom adds, hinting at concerns that this defeat might end like others - with a return of an even stronger Taliban to the area.

However, the government's handling of the internal displacement (IDP) crisis is receiving its fair share of critical coverage. Columnist Noreen Haider, writing on The News website, condemns the government's lack of preparation for the disaster, singling out the National Disaster Management Authority for particular rebuke.

The body governing emergency response has failed to set up the provincial and district disaster management authorities who were supposed to deal with crises on this scale, Haider says.

International agencies also come in for criticism, with Haider saying the failure of U.N. agencies to cooperate in setting up community kitchens in the camps is indicative of a wider problem.

"There is very little coordination among the various agencies and provincial governments working for the IDPs. There is still a huge shortfall of the items actually required by the IDPs, especially those off-camp and their host families, but no one seems to have any exact data regarding that".

The government has cited public backing in justifying its offensive, but there are now signs that concerns over the displacement crisis are beginning to dent support for the larger anti-Taliban operation.

Boston's Christian Science Monitor warns that public opinion may well be about to turn among those caught up in the middle: "As Pakistan's military operation to clear the Taliban from Swat Valley enters a decisive phase, it's won support from an unlikely group: the residents who had to flee the fighting and whose homes and business may be destroyed when they return. But that backing is on the decline, as internally displaced persons taking shelter in camps, community centers, and other people's homes, wait in vain for the news of key Taliban leaders being killed or arrested - and as temperatures top 110 degrees F."

Links and further information on Pakistan

• Comprehensive coverage from Pakistani news outlet with heavy focus on the humanitarian situation - Dawn: Swat Special Coverage

• Details of the efforts of ordinary Pakistanis to deliver relief to IDPs - - Teeth Maestro blog

• Round-up of bloggers mobilising for Pakistan's refugees - BBC

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