Amid the ruins of the Taliban conflict

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Pakistan's government has begun to return home some two million people displaced by the conflict in the Swat valley. The BBC's Jill McGivering reports on the scene that lay in wait for those who returned to nearby Buner.

Much of Sultan Wass has been razed to the ground

The small village of Sultan Wass lies on a steep hillside in the shadow of the rugged mountains of Swat's Buner district.

During the recent military offensive here against the insurgents, the village was considered a Taliban stronghold.

There was fierce fighting.

In the end, Pakistan's military took the ground after calling for air strikes. About half the houses were destroyed.

I needed a military escort to visit the village. Maj Rasheed of the Frontier Corps led me through, pointing out piles of rubble.

One had been a commercial building, he said. Another had been the local madrassa (religious school). A few concrete pillars stuck out of the piles of broken mud bricks.

Destroyed

The Taliban converted every house into a bunker or ammunition cache, he told me, and fought from the houses. By then, most of the local people had already fled.

<a name="story"></a> <a class="bodl" href="#map">See a map of the region</a> Further on, the major pointed out a bomb crater. An elderly man was standing nearby, wearing a traditional cap and a long shirt streaked with dirt.

<a class="" href="/2/hi/south_asia/8137427.stm">Burden of the hosts</a>

His name was Badshagay, he said, and a bomb had fallen on his house. He took me to meet his family, gathered in the one room that was still intact.

Inside, the women of the family gathered round me, eager to tell their story. A daughter said her house had also been destroyed. Another relative said her husband was missing.

Badshagay's wife was tearful. They couldn't afford to rebuild their house, she said, and they didn't have enough money to start again anywhere else. They had salvaged what they could from the rubble but most of their possessions were broken or ruined.

Bustling market

"If our children get sick, there's no medicine," she said. "We don't have clothes, there's no electricity. Who would like to have such a life?"

Sultan Wass was a Taliban stronghold

The government has promised to give a cash handout to every family which fled the fighting and is now returning.

It has also offered extra payments for damaged property. But the stories I have heard on the ground suggest the process of accessing these payments is proving complicated. This family, for example, had no idea they might be entitled to anything.

Down the road from Sultan Wass, I visited Swarai bazaar. It was the most bustling market I saw as I drove through the district. Small shops, selling clothing and kitchen utensils were open. Stalls were piled high with all sorts of fruits and vegetables - tomatoes, cucumbers and plump mangoes.

I spoke to a middle-aged man who was buying fruit. How far, I asked, were things starting to return to normal?

"Life is getting back to normal in many parts of the district," he said. "People are returning. The shops are starting to open again. But there are other places which the army hasn't reached and the Taliban is there. I'm worried about the Taliban. They may come back."

That is a fear I have heard expressed many times. People who fled the fighting are now living in government-run camps or, more commonly, in the homes of local families. Many are enduring cramped conditions and poor sanitation facilities in sweltering heat.

Every displaced family I ha ve spoken to said they were desperate to go back home. But they wanted to be sure first that fighting in their home town or village had really stopped. The government says that many Taliban fighters have been killed and insists they are not still in the area.

But some local people fear the fighters have merely been displaced and, if they are hiding out in the rough mountainous terrain, they are anxious that the Taliban may indeed come back, once the presence of the security forces is scaled down.

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