Rebuilding life amid rubble, looted homes and disease

Nahr Al Bared, Lebanon: Abu Tawfiq stands in the soot-encrusted ruin of his home as cold rain blows in where an outside wall once stood.

"The room is Hiroshima and the other one is Nagasaki," said the former school teacher who, agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.

He's one of some 5,000 Palestinians who recently returned to the battle-ravaged ruins of this coastal refugee camp in north Lebanon, home to more than 40,000 people before the outbreak in May of three months of fighting between the Lebanese Army and Al Qaida-inspired militants of Fatah Al Islam.

The Lebanese government in September secured pledges of $22 million (about Dh80 million) from international donors to help the refugees, far short of the estimated $382.5 million needed to provide relief and rebuild Nahr Al Bared.

The government has said it will rebuild the camp, but has offered no specifics nor deadlines.

The Palestinians began returning to their homes on October 10, just over a month after the fighting ended. Their homes are located in the "new camp", a spillover cordon ringing the original plot of land earmarked by the Lebanese government in 1948 for the refugees. The "old camp", which saw the worst of the fighting, appears to have been completely destroyed.

Despite the terrible conditions inside Nahr Al Bared, the Palestinians say they are returning partly because the camp is their home and because many cannot afford the skyrocketing rents at the Badawi refugee camp, seven miles to the south. The demand for somewhere to stay saw rent for even a garage soar from $25 a month to $200, a huge sum for the impoverished refugees.

Access to Nahr Al Bared is still tightly controlled by the army. Journalists are banned from the camp and only a few NGOs and an UN agency have been allowed inside. The restricted access is compounding allegations made by returning Palestinians that Lebanese troops looted, vandalised, and torched their homes.

Vandalism

The walls of homes are covered with graffiti, some patriotic messages signed by individual army units, others insults directed toward the Palestinians.

In Mahmoud's home, sacks of stored flour, rice, and sugar were sliced open with knives or bayonets and spilled onto the floor. Two rooms were set on fire, the walls and ceiling streaked with black lines from the flammable liquid thought to have started the blaze.

"We had one television smashed and one stolen, three radios stolen, and $8,000 in cash stolen," said Mahmoud. "The soldiers wrote us a note saying that the money was for them not us."

Last month, Amnesty International called on the Lebanese government to launch an inquiry into the alleged arson and looting. The government said in a statement that it "does not accept at all any violation of the law or human rights, especially against our Palestinian refugee brothers".

"The terrorists booby-trapped entire buildings with explosives. They had to be set on fire to safely detonate bombs," a senior Lebanese army officer said.

It took two weeks for Abu Tawfiq and his family of 12 to clear the rubble from the ruins of his home. One outer wall and several internal walls were blasted away during the fighting.

There is no running water, no electricity, and no sanitation. With their household goods destroyed, many continue to wear T-shirts and shorts despite the freezing rain, sloshing through ankle-deep mud in flip-flops. Medics report increased cases of diarrhea, infections from cuts, chest and stomach problems, and even a few cases of dysentery.

Yet, despite the miserable circumstances, seven young brides and grooms were married yesterday, a chance for the Palestinians to briefly forget their woes and celebrate instead.