SWABI, Pakistan — Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, declared Thursday that the tide had “decisively turned” in the military’s battle against Taliban extremists in the Swat Valley, but displaced Pakistanis in a sprawling tent city here said it was still unsafe for them to return home.
The Shah Mansour camp was one of two that Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, visited Thursday. Its population has grown to more than 20,000 in the three weeks since it was set up.
In a message he repeated several times, Holbrooke said that President Barack Obama and the people of the U.S. cared about them and were helping their government assist them.
On Wednesday, Holbrooke met with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on his arrival in Islamabad, the capital, and announced that Obama had asked Congress for another $200 million in emergency aid for the crisis.
