JALOZAI CAMP, Pakistan, Sept 4 (AlertNet) - Thousands of people who fled a Pakistani army offensive against the Taliban earlier this year don't want to return home despite the authorities' promise that it is now safe.

They say that life in the camps is actually better than in the villages.

Jalozai camp, 35 km (22 miles) southwest of Peshawar, is home to tens of thousands of Pakistanis who fled their homes during the fighting which has been going on for about a year.

The blazing sun beats down on thousands of tents packed into barren wasteland. Babies scream and the smell of sewage hangs in the air.

Outside the makeshift latrines built by aid agencies, 45-year-old widow, Zura, sits on a wheelchair. Her legs were amputated after her home in Bajaur Agency was hit by shelling.

The mother of four has been living in the camp for one year and says that while camp conditions are miserable, she prefers to stay than return home.

"I don't have anything back home - no land, no home, no work," says Zura. "It is better for me to stay here. At least they give me shelter, water and some food like lentils and cooking oil."

According to the government, over 80 percent of the estimated 2.3 million people who were displaced by the fighting, mostly since April, have returned to their homes in the past month.

Officials say most returnees are from the more prosperous Swat valley -- a fertile mountainous region which had a flourishing tourist, mining and agriculture sectors before the conflict.

But for those displaced from Pakistan's impoverished Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), there is little to go back to.

"These people are the poorest of the poor who have no stakes in their home areas," said Lieutenant-General Nadeem Ahmed, chairman of the Special Support Group for the internally displaced.

"Most of the men were actually working in places like Peshawar as daily labourers and taking money home at the end of the month," said Ahmed. "Now they are working out of the camps, where their families have tents and access to medical services and food rations."

IMPOVERISHED

FATA is made up of seven areas -- Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan and South Waziristan -- which border Afghanistan.

Most of the region's three million-plus population eke a living from farming, inhabiting remote inaccessible mountainous terrain where there is a high level of militant activity.

Partly due to this, the FATA remains the most impoverished parts of Pakistan, falling behind the rest of the country in almost all the socio-economic indicators.

According to authorities, around 17 percent of the FATA's population is literate compared with the national average of 44 percent and there is only one doctor for every 7,670 people in FATA, compared with 1,226 nationally.

Relief workers add that as much as 60 percent of FATA households are living below the poverty line and health coverage is negligible.

There are around 35,000 displaced people, mainly from FATA, living in Jalozai camp alone.

With tens of thousands more displaced in other camps and living with host communities, aid workers worry about sustaining such displacement camps as the humanitarian focus shifts to rehabilitating those returning to their homes.

At Jalozai, men sit under the shade of the makeshift-mud walls built alongside their tents, young girls collect water from the taps installed by aid agencies, and mothers bathe their infants to keep them cool.

Mohammad Husain, 35, has been living with his family in Jalozai for the last nine months after fighting began near his home in Mohmand agency.

Husain, who is partially blind, says he is grateful for the help that he has been given by the government and aid agencies, but does not understand why he should return home.

"The little that we had has been destroyed," said Husain. "We live here as we have no where else to go."

Authorities hope that FATA's residents will go back once the government completes post-conflict damage assessments and provides housing damages to affected populations.

But some aid workers warn that it is going to take much more than cash allowances to resettle people.

"No one likes to live in such misery in camps," said one relief worker, who did not want to be named. "But money is not enough of an incentive for these people -- they need long-term security and visible signs of development in their home areas."

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