The Missing
On Monday, I traveled to Beirut for a quick assessment of the situation of Iraqi refugees in Lebanon. I met up with Habib, who had gone one day early to see his parents, and we had a wonderful dinner with Stephane Jaquemet, the UN High Comissioner for Refugees Representative for the region, and his wife.
On our way to dinner, we skirted along the border of the deserted tent camp Hezbollah and other opposition groups have set up in front of parliament, ringed by concertina wire and Lebanese army tanks.
Habib pointed out a smaller ring of tents to off to one side of the main protest. "Those people I don't mind" he said "Those are the families of the missing. They've been there for years." In the middle of the tents there was a board full of portraits.
Habib - who is an expert on this issue - told me 17,000 people went missing during the Lebanese Civil war. As in Iraq, abduction and kidnapping were common tactics. In the end, a handful of the missing were found in Syrian prisons. Of course, most were probably just murdered.
So now I am wondering how many Iraqis will be missing when this conflict calms down enough for somebody to make a count. Yesterday, I met with an Iraqi mother I had interviewed last winter, when I was in Jordan working as a freelance journalist. In 2006, her husband had been picked up by the Jordanian authorities and deported back to Iraq. The mother, who I will call Noor, had been struggling to support five children on her own. She didn't know if her husband would ever be able to rejoin them in Jordan.
When I saw her again yesterday, Noor told me that her husband disappeared on August 25th. She heard from a relative that he was on a bus traveling through Salah ah Din province in north central Iraq. Armed men stopped the bus, singled out 11 Shia men, and let the rest of the passengers go. That was two weeks ago, and Noor knows nothing more about what happened to her husband. That's probably all she will ever know.
On our way to dinner, we skirted along the border of the deserted tent camp Hezbollah and other opposition groups have set up in front of parliament, ringed by concertina wire and Lebanese army tanks.
Habib pointed out a smaller ring of tents to off to one side of the main protest. "Those people I don't mind" he said "Those are the families of the missing. They've been there for years." In the middle of the tents there was a board full of portraits.
Habib - who is an expert on this issue - told me 17,000 people went missing during the Lebanese Civil war. As in Iraq, abduction and kidnapping were common tactics. In the end, a handful of the missing were found in Syrian prisons. Of course, most were probably just murdered.
So now I am wondering how many Iraqis will be missing when this conflict calms down enough for somebody to make a count. Yesterday, I met with an Iraqi mother I had interviewed last winter, when I was in Jordan working as a freelance journalist. In 2006, her husband had been picked up by the Jordanian authorities and deported back to Iraq. The mother, who I will call Noor, had been struggling to support five children on her own. She didn't know if her husband would ever be able to rejoin them in Jordan.
When I saw her again yesterday, Noor told me that her husband disappeared on August 25th. She heard from a relative that he was on a bus traveling through Salah ah Din province in north central Iraq. Armed men stopped the bus, singled out 11 Shia men, and let the rest of the passengers go. That was two weeks ago, and Noor knows nothing more about what happened to her husband. That's probably all she will ever know.
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posted by Amelia at
7:47 AM
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