NOBODY, it seems, saw it coming. Fikret Akcura, the United Nations’ senior official in Pakistan, concedes that there is still no clear plan for giving aid to most of those who have fled fighting in the Swat valley between the Pakistani army and Islamist militants. He defends the relief effort, which has seen camps hastily prepared for the displaced. But some 80% of the estimated 2.4m uprooted people have sought refuge elsewhere. The difficulties are only just beginning. As the army asserts control in Swat, it is becoming clear that, as elsewhere in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and adjoining tribal areas, the civilian administration there is rotten.

The military campaign, now in its sixth week, was launched after Taliban fighters flouted a peace deal covering the Malakand division in NWFP, which includes the valley. On May 30th the army said it had recaptured Mingora, Swat’s main town. The army claims to have killed 1,200 militants, at the cost of 90 soldiers’ lives. For once, public opinion is firmly behind the operation. Support, however, could dissipate fast if the displaced are not cared for, and Taliban leaders simply melt away.

On June 3rd Richard Holbrooke, America’s envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, visiting Islamabad, said the administration had asked Congress for $200m in emergency aid for the displaced. The UN had appealed for $543m to help it cope with the humanitarian disaster, but so far raised just $137m. When the fighting started, it was already struggling to help 500,000 refugees from earlier campaigns in Swat and the Bajaur tribal area.

Under Mr Akcura, the UN has only just started to look beyond its established humanitarian programmes in Pakistan to the consequences of the insurgency. A recent internal report argued that it should quickly involve itself in bolstering the government in NWFP and the tribal areas, to avert grave instability. As the head of the NWFP police, Malik Naveed, says: “You name it, we need it.” The boss of a hospital in Peshawar, NWFP’s capital, says the flood of refugees has almost bankrupted it.

America has committed $750m in aid to the tribal areas, but some of the contractors through whom the money is being channelled are indistinguishable from bandits, and the local administration is threadbare and corrupt. Khalid Aziz, formerly a senior official in the area, says there is neither proper oversight nor any overall strategy. A decades-old debate about how to govern the semi-autonomous tribal areas shows no sign of producing an answer.

This week clashes between the security forces and militants in the tribal areas intensified. On June 2nd troops rescued 79 students and staff from a college in North Waziristan, after they were abducted by tribal militants. The army is poised to extend its campaign into South Waziristan, the main base of Baitullah Mehsud, the chieftain of the Pakistani Taliban. The UN estimates this will displace another 500,000 people. In readiness for the expected fighting, the Red Cross has opened a hospital for the war-wounded in Peshawar.

Over the six weeks of the campaign, militants have carried out a dozen bomb attacks across Pakistan, including three on May 24th in the north-west, a day after 24 people were killed by gunfire and a suicide-bomb in Lahore. But, in the eyes of the authorities at least, there are still good and bad jihadists. On June 2nd, to the fury of Indian officials, Lahore’s high court freed from house arrest Hafiz Mohammad Saeed. Now posing as the head of a charity, he founded Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist outfit accused of killing some 170 people in Mumbai last November.