If the issue is left to itself and the refugee situation continues like this there is a risk that the ongoing crisis may turn into a big humanitarian catastrophe for the region and beyond.

The issue of wheat subsidy has opened a Pandora’s Box on the status of the region. As a disputed territory with meagre per capita hand holding the people are also resenting the way the government and other state institutions are acquiring land at mass scales which further reduces the land available for cultivation in the future.

The recent Pakistani move to push out Afghan refugees seems to have been less carefully thought through because it could jeopardise informal relationship between the Afghan people and the Pakistan government at the popular level on the one hand and rile the Pakistani Pashtun population in the border areas on the other. Rather than containing the TTP, this move may actually further legitimize its Islamist campaign against the Pakistan state.