Writing now from Beirut, having arrived a few days ago on a ship chartered by the Canadian government to evacuate the last of their nationals from Lebanon. The last days and nights have been filled with the enormity of arriving in a war zone, though the central part of the city where I am now staying is oddly removed in many ways from the nightly air raids of the southern suburbs. There are booms and flashes as new targets are hit north and south of the city, but the war here is more tangibly visible in the long lines now forming for gas, which is in increasingly short supply. The station I walk past each morning on my way to the office here had 32 cars in line yesterday morning – the point at which the line turned a corner and I could not count the others waiting. If the fuel goes, the electricity goes, and if that goes the troubles here will compound overnight. In speaking with the displaced who are crowding the makeshift centers here – mostly schools and other public buildings now housing hundreds of thousands of Lebanese fleeing the war – there is fear and anger and frustration, all that would be expected as the politicians debate nightly the terms of an agreement that is paper to them, but very much more than that to those sheltering from Israeli bombs here in Beirut. With the situation here still very fluid, it is hard to travel, and we are on a self-imposed dusk curfew. Still, I hope to get out of the city and head as far south as I can once it is relatively safe to do so. As it now stands, no passage right now is considered safe, and aid agencies who have staff here are by and large in “stand by” mode, awaiting the chance to move supplies to those most in need down south. More from Beirut as I can.
August 6th, 2006 | by David in Humanitarian Aid, Travel
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
