Thousands Displaced for a Military Push Pakistan Said It Didn’t Order

Some 60,000 evacuees have been left in limbo by confusion and political disputes as Pakistan battles insurgents on its border with Afghanistan.

Thousands of Pakistanis who lived along their nation’s tense border with Afghanistan have been left stranded after being driven from their homes last month to make way for a military campaign against Islamist fighters that their government now says it never planned.

Local and national officials have given conflicting accounts of the abrupt mass relocation of residents in the Tirah Valley, a rugged region that has long been a key transit route and staging ground for attacks across the border. Local governments say they were told to move the residents, but national officials in Islamabad, the capital, say the central government and armed forces never gave such an order.

No official figures have been released, but district officials estimate that more than 60,000 people have been displaced by the evacuation, which began in early January. Many faced snow and freezing temperatures as they fled the border.

However, national officials have begun to deny that a military operation is underway or that they asked residents to leave their homes. At a news conference in Islamabad last Tuesday, Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, seemed skeptical that an evacuation had even taken place, calling the displacement a “seasonal migration.”