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UNICEF recently announced that the number of people displaced by ongoing military operations against the Taliban in Pakistan had crept up to 3.4 million. The exodus from the country’s northern and tribal areas — which began as a trickle in August 2008 and swelled during offensives launched in May 2009 — is one of the largest internal displacements of a population in the world, along with Rwanda. Not since the partition of the subcontinent has this region seen such wide-scale migration. And the humanitarian crisis faced by internally displaced persons (IDPs) poses a greater threat to Pakistan than terrorism itself.

Already, reports have surfaced that security personnel have arrested militants from IDP camps established across the Frontier province. These are worrying on several fronts. First, the fact that militants have been able to pass as IDPs and escape fighting in the north raises the question of how many innocents have been mistaken for militants and punished. Moreover, the mingling of IDPs and militants in crowded refugee camps creates a potentially explosive situation.

The IDPs are exhausted and enraged. With little or no prior notice, they have been forced from their homes as the military faces off against militants. Their property has become collateral damage in what they see as a war that might have been avoided. The military offensive comes at the time of an important harvest, leaving many IDPs without food or a source of income in coming months. Arriving in government-established IDP camps in places like Peshawar and Mardan, residents of the tribal and north-west areas have found a shortage of accommodation, food and health care. They are acutely aware that the government has no long-term plan or vision for their rehabilitation or compensation.

In such desperate circumstances, with little left to lose, IDPs may comprise a new generation of militants. After all, if Taliban fighters manage to infiltrate IDP camps, they can play on the raw emotions of the displaced and recruit them to fight against the government whose actions have caused so much damage. What will Pakistan do if, when the dust of current military operations settles, it is faced with a new insurgency in the form of radicalised IDPs?

The fact that the IDPs have scattered across the country in search of food and shelter poses its own problems, too. If displaced people are inadvertently serving as cover for militant movement, their mass migration could spread militancy, which has thus far been contained in the Frontier province and tribal areas (with the exception of recent attacks in Lahore). Southern Punjab, which has long been identified as a potential hotbed for terrorism, may yet find itself housing militants who arrive in the guise of IDPs.

With these concerns in mind, provincial governments in the Punjab and Sindh have been reluctant to accommodate IDPs. The Punjab government recently decided that it would not permit IDP camps within its territory, and instead offered financial support to camps in the Frontier. The law minister categorically stated thatIDPs seeking shelter with relatives would be registered while their hosts would be required to complete a surety bond. Meanwhile, two strikes against the influx of IDPs in Karachi in May gave a clear message: Sindhis fear becoming a minority in their own province while the Urdu-speaking population of Karachi will prevent the ‘Talibanisation’ of the city at all costs.

This backlash against the IDPs is counterproductive. It is bound to stoke ethnic tensions and concretise the perception that Pathans are second-class citizens in their own homeland. These feelings, in turn, will provoke sympathy for the Taliban cause, which is strategically aligned with nationalist Pathan sentiment, among the IDPs. And if there’s one thing that trumps the righteousness of religious fury in Pakistan, it’s ethnic pride. Ethnic clashes sparked by the poor treatment of IDPs could plunge Pakistan into deeper and more endemic problems than its war against terrorism.

With regards to Islamabad, the plight of the IDPs reveals the weaknesses of the current government. In Zimbabwe, where a cholera epidemic has claimed over 4,000 lives in recent months, the government’s inability to strengthen the country’s health infrastructure has been seen as an indication of how that state is failing. Similarly, Pakistan’s inability to manage this unprecedented humanitarian crisis will expose the cracks in its civic infrastructures. After failing to deal with the Taliban in a decisive way, the government cannot afford another public failure.

Ultimately, the most important thing for Pakistan right now is a national consensus against militancy. When the army operation launched in May, most Pakistanis were in favor of crushing the high-handed Taliban. Within days of the IDP crisis gaining momentum, many began to re-evaluate whether the army crackdown was worth the humanitarian toll it has inflicted. As IDPs in camps battle illness and starvation, Pakistan’s will to fight against militants is in danger of waning.