The graffiti scrawled on Shanti Hamal's house was all it took for this 37-year-old to leave her home in Khursanibari in Dailekh.

'On the 18th, it's your turn' said the blood-red letters. Shanti immediately packed her bags and left home arriving in Surkhet on 1 July. She has been here ever since.

The day before Shanti fled, Dilli Koirala and Rishi Dhakal had been mercilessly beaten by Maoists something Shanti had seen with her own eyes. She was just too afraid to stay.

Shanti says the reason she may have been targeted was because the army had removed a booby-trapped red banner outside her home a few weeks previously. The Maoists had accused her of being a government spy. That was also the reason Koirala and Shakal were beaten until they nearly died.

The irony of Nepal's conflict is that Shanti has also been at the receiving end of the wrath of the security forces. Last year, there was a firefight between insurgents and soldiers in her village. The soldiers went house-to-house interrogating, threatening and intimidating. "It's not my fault at all, yet neither side will leave me alone," Shanti told us in Surkhet, with tears rolling down her cheeks.

Shanti says that although Khursanibari is near Dailekh's district capital, it is contested terrain so villagers have to walk a fine line and try not to get caught in the middle. There are many like Shanti who are internally displaced in Surkhet.

Lalkaura Malla is a 61-year-old from Pakha in Kalikot. Since her husband is an RPP member, her 14-member clan left the village four years ago and haven't been back since. Of the 14, five are women and they eke out a living running a restaurant in town. "Sometimes when they are sick, there isn't enough money to take care of them, there is never enough food," says Lalkaura, "and we can't sleep at night worried about the rest of the family still up there in Kalikot."

Human rights activists have been trying to convince families like the Mallas and Hamals to go back to their village, saying the Maoists have guaranteed their safety. But Lalkaura is convinced it's not safe. "They will not leave us alive," she says simply. The displaced women of Surkhet would rather that rights groups gave them training in income-generating activities so they can continue with their lives and take care of their families. "Among the internally displaced, it is the women who suffer most," says Lalkaura.

According to the human rights group INSEC, there are some 250 internally displaced families in Surkhet alone. None of them are receiving any aid. INSEC's Surkhet representative Durga Thapa says his organisation doesn't provide financial aid but is trying to ensure that it is safe for the families to return to their villages. Recently, INSEC got the Maoists to guarantee that 27 families could return safely to Jumla.

"Ultimately, both sides have to talk and sort this out," says Thapa, "but it is inhuman to chase out women and separate mothers from their children."

(Mahila Bolchhin, NPI Nepalganj)