Oregon Public Broadcasting

The Portland-based relief organization, Mercy Corps, is delivering supplies this week into war-torn parts of Pakistan.

Officials say they’ve distributed more than 1000 emergency kits in the Northwest Frontier Province. But that’s a fairly small effort, considering estimates of between half a million and a million internally displaced people there.

Mercy Corps spokeswoman Caitlin Carlson says a handful of aid workers are working with a security team to find relatively safe places to provide help.

Caitlin Carlson:  “One step that we’re taking is avoiding formal displacement camps, and we’re going into quieter communities where people have fled into that are a little bit more safe.”

Mercy Corps has been working in Pakistan for more than twenty years.

Caitlin says the organization is trying to stay out of the conflict between the Pakistani central government and the Taliban, by allying itself primarily with local governments, instead.