by Julia Beirut

Created on: June 15, 2009   Last Updated: July 23, 2009

The fear on the faces of children in the refugee camps in Pakistan is heart breaking. Pictures in the media show young children standing in long lines at refugee camps for food, tea and water. The heat is sweltering, usually over 100 degrees.

Many of the refugees are from the Swat, Buner and Dir regions where the climate is milder. They are not used to the extreme heat they now experience in the refugee camps. The children are in crisis and suffering with a future they cannot picture, for it may never be safe to return to the areas where they lived previously. That is a cruel reality for a child to adjust to.

Pakistan is in crisis due to the threat of takeover by the Taliban. The Taliban has been bombing schools for girls, murdering police officers with suicide bomber attacks on police stations, and terrorizing the public with frequent suicide bomb attacks on mosques.

Prime Minister, Yousaf Gilani stated:"In order to restore honor and dignity of the country, the armed forces have been called in to eliminate militants and terrorists. We will eliminate those who have tried to destroy the peace of the country." (Independent, London)

Recently the Taliban has been sending suicide bombers into mosques. In too many recent weeks, Friday prayers have been the scene of a mosque attack. Forty people recently lost their lives in a single mosque bombing. A religious site is a sacred place; however the Taliban do not honor this common decency and use mosque attacks to terrorize Pakistan's populace. Pakistanis are furious that the Taliban is bombing mosques in retribution for the military attack on the Taliban in Swat and other regions.

The refugee camps too often lack basic food, medical supplies, and necessities for decent living conditions. A humanitarian crisis is underway as almost two million refugees have left their homes and settled in with relatives or in refugee camps. Hospitals near the refugee camps lack the drugs needed to treat patients. Most physicians have fled the area; thus hospitals are understaffed and barely able to function.

Patients suffer while their treatment is delayed due to drug shortages and lack of onsite physicians and surgeons. The conditions are worse than anyone who has never lived in the midst of war could imagine with the media reporting hospitals with garbage stuffed under the patient beds and the few doctors still on staff overworked and distraught at their working conditions.

As the battle between the military and the Taliban

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