Spent the day today with Iraqi refugees in the Zeatrieh community of Beirut. It’s become something of a “Little Baghdad,” home to a few hundred Iraqi families. Those in Zeatrieh are mostly Christians, and many are from the northern city of Mosul. Last summer the Bishop there was assassinated, and a major up tick in violence and threats against Christians followed, forcing many to flee. Like refugees everywhere, those living in Beirut are struggling. Most entered the country legally, acquiring visas that allowed them to enter as tourists, but then overstaying those visas. Living now as illegals, they cannot work, or access many public services. They are subject to arrest. And while the Migrant Detention Center, underneath an overpass in central Beirut, houses more than 400 refugees as of today, the Lebanese government is also willing to turn a blind eye, to some extent, to the estimated 25,000 – 50,000 Iraqi’s now living here. If they have registered with the United Nations upon arrival, most are destined ultimately for third countries. I met women yesterday who will soon be moving to San Diego, Chicago – and Detroit. Others are heading to Scandinavia, and some to Australia.
Here in Beirut they are living just to make it to that day. Most live with relatives or friends when they first arrive, and eventually find their way to tiny, cramped apartments, fearful of arrest and watching whatever savings they have disappear with each passing month. The families I met today carry deeper scars from Iraq – one man had his 2-year-old daughter kidnapped, and never returned. Another family sold their house to mortgage a ransom demand for a relative also kidnapped – the money was delivered, but he was never seen again.
One family I met had a copy of the last threat they received with them. It had been slipped under the door of their house – a threat against Christians calling them “traitors” and claiming they “sold Iraq,” and that they should leave or be killed. They left.
One thing that struck me most was just how many are being resettled in the United States. For people everywhere, despite the damage caused to our international image over the last eight years, still dream of America. But I wondered how those heading here from Iraq felt about moving to the country that brought about this upheaval. Christians under Saddam, while not warmly welcomed into society, were also not persecuted. When I posed that question to those I met today I got interesting answers. Most said they were happy to go anywhere there was stability – the most common refrain I heard all day. But when I posed the question to the family who’d been threatened with the note, the oldest brother in the family spoke up. He said the problems in Iraq today are not the cause of the Americans. They are simply a struggle for power, he said, a struggle unrelated to the events of the US invasion. He said some people in Iraq had turned into “savages.” When I asked him how long it would take for Iraq to be stable, he laughed a bit, and offered a timeline. “One hundred years,” he said.
February 17th, 2009 | by David in Travel
I spent the last two days up in Nahr Al Bared. It’s not a place most have heard of, though it stood for 60 years as a monument to a a lost people. Dramatic as that sounds, it’s also true. And I say stood, because physically, at least, the old camp of Nahr Al Bared no longer exists.
Established in 1949 as a temporary home for Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel, Nahr Al Bared grew both in size and in permanence over the decades that followed. Though the camp population grew fourfold, the ground alloted for the camp’s existance grew barely at all. As new generations arrived, born as refugees of a state no longer in existence, the camp grew the only way it could: strait up. Ugly concete additions soon blotted out the sun for the camps earliest residents, a dark existance for thousands in a corner of northern Lebanon.
In 2007, militants within the camp clashed with the Lebanese Army. In the months that followed, the old part of the Nahr Al Bared camp was literally flattened. Today, 16 months since the end of the fighting, the camp’s 30,000 residents remain displaced, sharing homes with relatives in nearby camps, or crowded into tiny shelters provided by the UN Relief and Works Agency, responsible for the care of Palestinian refugees. I met a man today who shared a 36 square foot home with his parent and six brothers and sisters. They, like many here, have given up wondering when they might return to the homes they lost in the old camp.
It is difficult to describe the anger, frustration, and hopelessness that pervades a Palestinian refugee camp. They are hot beds of disaffected youth with no future, and no country. Though eager, young men within cannot find work. Young women have even fewer opportunities. But for the last two days I have been amazed at the resilience of the people of Nahr Al Bared, who find a way to make it, day after day, in a place few of us could even begin to imagine.
February 11th, 2009 | by David in Travel
Got in Saturday night. Two years, almost exactly, since I was here – March 2007, on a follow up trip from my time here during the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict in 2006. Spent the day yesterday doing a photo training for 360 teenagers taking part in a program supported by the US State Department. Through the program, kids in Lebanon get access to a range of educational and language-learning experiences. They brought in four groups each of 90 kids per class, and we did two hours for each group on the basics of photography – framing, lighting, composition, and what to think about as you take photos. The program then provided a disposable print camera to each student, and we sent them home with an assignment to document, in the next week, whatever the theme “Your Future” means to them. They’ll take the cameras around with them – to their homes, to their schools and neighborhoods - and shoot 27 photos each, one full roll. Next week, they drop the cameras off to their teachers in the program, who will develop the film, and on the 20th and 21st I’ll go back over and we’ll critique the images they took. Looking forward to it. I’ve done lots of photo trainings, but mostly for adult NGO staff and partners. It’ll be fascinating to see what kids of pictures these kids capture. Most live in pretty rough areas in and around Beirut. Not an easy life for a teenager.
With as much damage as has been done to the US image abroad in the last eight years – I’ve personally seen so much if it in that time - it’s nice to know that we have programs like this to provide some direct and positive connection for youth abroad, especially in Muslim countries, to get to know America. I was here in Lebanon three summers ago as Israel pounded the same areas of Beirut where many of these kids live with American-made fighter jets and bombs. It’s the sad and frustrating reality of much of our policies in the Middle East – policies so little understood by most Americans I’m afraid. The anger and hatred among many here feel is evident. But among these kids yesterday, all 16 or 17 years old, they were just teenagers, young and energetic, and they completely embraced the chance to learn something new, and interact directly with anyone willing to take some time to teach them something. I’m a firm believer that education is the key to just about all positive change in the world – I’ve seen too often places and policies where ignorance is the root cause of poverty and conflict. So I hope for at least these kids they have a chance to cultivate some broader understanding, both of themselves and America, through something like this. I’ll keep you posted on how the next training goes when they bring their pictures back in…
February 9th, 2009 | by David in Travel
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