‘The people were nothing’

THOUSANDS of Pakistanis have had their homes reduced to rubble by mortar shells, but some victims of the armed conflict may as well have been bombed back to the 19th century.

Off a dirt road and through fields of maize growing under the burning sun near the town of Swabi are a series of mud caves, built by farmers for their livestock and now hosting families with nowhere else to go.

Seven families live in these caves, but in recent months the number of families living in these conditions numbered as many as 70. Like a scene from a dog-eared copy of National Geographic, home for the remaining families is a place cleaved out of the earth, a place liable to be washed away at any time by heavy rains. Shah Jehan, one of the men staying in the caves with his wife and children, tries to remember how old he is. Like many of those still living in the caves, he is from a poorer tribe and remarkably stoical. “I want to go home because it is too hot and I have no food for the animals,” he says. All-but-ignored by local government, his family have been supplied with essential food by the rural development project (RDP).