Nahr al-Barid.. what's next?
Quote:
Lebanese troops crush Islamists in siege camp
2 September 2007
NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (AFP) — Lebanese troops on Sunday took full control of a devastated refugee camp that had been besieged for three months and held by diehard Islamist militants of Fatah al-Islam, the military said.
The Palestinian camp, a honeycomb of tunnels and houses reinforced against possible Israeli air attack, finally fell to a mass assault on Sunday after troops killed at least 37 Islamist militants as they made a desperate pre-dawn bid to break the siege, army and security sources said.
Another 15 Islamists were arrested, some of whom had managed to make it to nearby villages but were caught in the manhunt that included troops searching roofs and watertanks.
More than 220 people, including 158 Lebanese troops, were killed during the standoff which started on May 20 near the sprawling camp outside the northern city of Tripoli.
Now the hard part starts.
More than 32,000 people were displaced from Nahr al-Barid refugee camp, most of them fleeing to nearby Baddawi camp where they've been put up in refugee homes and UNRWA and Lebanese government schools since May 20. Nahr al-Barid is, from the UNOSAT (Ikonos) satellite imagery that I've seen, very badly damaged. UNRWA will need to find space for temporary accommodation for the displaced Palestinians (a sensitive issue in Lebanon), and then will have to reconstruct the camp (another sensitive issue, complicated by a host of land ownership and other questions). The costs will be significant, with camp reconstruction possibly running well over $150 million (equivalent to about one-third of UNRWA's annual budget for all 4.5 million refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank).
The Lebanese government was at pains to signal to refugees that the camp would be reconstructed, and that (in contrast to all previous governments) it was also committed to improving their general standard of living. However, given both the costs of continued reconstruction after the Israel-Hizbullah war last summer, high levels of government debt, and a Lebanese view that responsibility for the Palestinian issue is international, the funds for doing so will have to come from external (especially Gulf) donors.
Failure to reconstruct will not only prolong humanitarian suffering of the displaced, but will also be seen as confirmation of constant rumours that the Nahr al-Barid fighting was somehow engineered by the Siniora government and the US to destroy the camp, liquidate the refugee problem, etc.
Moreover, while the current government's position on Lebanese-Palestinian relations has been much more positive than past governments, the loss of so many Lebanese Army personnel (plus Fateh al-Islam rocketing of the Tripoli power station and nearby villages) has hardly improved relations at the popular level (despite few of the militants being Palestinian, and the government's emphasis that this was NOT a Lebanese-Palestinian conflict).
squalor of the refugee camps
By global standards, very few Palestinian refugee camps are truly "squalid" by global standrads--in most places (Syria, Jordan, the West Bank) only a minority of refugees live in the camps, which have simply become low-income housing areas. Refugee incomes and standards of living in those areas are equal to those of the non-refugee population.
Gaza is slightly different because it is overcrowded, much poorer, and most of the population are refugees.
Lebanon is even more different still because refugees have, in the past, been barred from using government social services, from working in most professions, and even from owning property. (The Siniora government would like to change this.) Moreover, ever since the civil wars refugees have tended to cluster in camps for security. All of this reflects the enormous demographic and political sensitivity of the refugee issue in Lebanon, where the constitution explicitly forbids permanent settlement of the Palestinians there.
UNRWA--the UN agency that deals with Palestinian refugees--generally does an excellent job, as the social indicators suggest. (Donors have sometimes criticized the agency for budgetary planning and management/reporting issues, but not for corruption and waste.)
Gulf money financed the reconstruction of destroyed refugee housing in Jenin and Rafah/Khan Yunis (Gaza)... I suspect it will be the same in Nahr al-Barid.
Hizbullah thread, continued....
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Penta
Unless the Lebanese Armed Forces are the ones to make the attempt, then it doesn't matter.
Reality is, so far as I can tell...Hezbollah is not even remotely subject to the authority of the de jure government of Lebanon.
Until Hezbollah is brought under Beirut's control, and the whole of Lebanese territory is actively under the sovereignty of the government in Beirut, then the situation won't change much.
With the exception of this summer's fighting at Nahr al-Barid, the LAF has never been used domestically in a substantive way without it fragmenting along sectarian-political lines (as it did in 1976). Moreover, roughly c40% + of the Lebanese population is Shi'ite, as are a similar (or larger) share of the LAF rank-and-file. About half of the overall Lebanese population support the March 8 opposition (Hizbullah, Amal, Aoun). With the probable level of support for Hizallah in the LAF (or, at least, a refusal to use force against it), I can't imagine circumstances under which the LAF would even consider trying to forcibly disarm the party (even assuming it has the military capacity to do so)
The most probable outcome of the current presidential impasse is the formation of a national unity cabinet in which Hizballah is directly or indirectly represented, and in which it enjoys (along with its allies) a veto power over major decisions. In these circumstances, disarmament is even more unlikely, although a "moderating" change in the relationship between its political and military aspects might take place over time (although, for reasons I've already posted, I'm not optimistic this will take place quickly or soon).