Tag Archives: Tunisia

TATAOINE, Tunisia — Libya’s civil war has created at least two and perhaps three refugee streams in Tunisia, as well as four parallel efforts to help them. Tataoine, the Tunisian border town that is the home of a vast refugee aid mission, and from which Libyans have constructed a complex supply chain that reaches to rebels fighting against Qaddafi, has three refugee camps. Only one, an hour from the Libyan border, is under UN administration. A second, right on the border, is run by the government of the United Arab Emirates. A third, in Tataoine’s soccer stadium, is a project of the kingdom of Qatar.

The four camps have become a sort of market for aid, with refugees choosing between the Emirates, Qatar, and UN camps. “Many people come here because it is very clean,” said Nuada Suliman Aker, a 15-year-old who fled Nalut in April and now looks after elementary-age children at a small school housed in a tent at the Qatari camp. Her father, a doctor, stayed behind to treat wounded soldiers in Nilut’s hospital. Compared to the Emirates camp, which is nice enough, the Qatar-run camp is spectacular. Qataris know desert shelter, and the camp’s tents are lined with a light, red fabric that makes the canvas seem less martial and the Saharan light less blinding. The bathrooms, complete with shower, are reasonably free of odor, and drinking water is segregated between men and women with subtle clarity. A playground, with bright plastic climbing toys and cartoons painted on the wall, adds a note of cheer to a scene that is, by any reasonable measure, miserable.

Shopping for refugee care isn’t limited to the camps. At Tataoine Hospital, which had several wounded soldiers in its wards when I visited in late June, administrators had yet to take delivery of $1,000,000 in UNHCR-pledged medical equipment, and had received no money for additional medicine and surgical supplies. The swell of refugees, which doubled Tataoine’s population, has overburdened the hospital, which has been pressed into service treating rocket and gunshot wounds. “This goes through protocols,” said Kamel Derich of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, who runs that agency’s efforts near the crossing, a bit helplessly. “The Tunisian Red Crescent hasn’t presented me a budget.

“Buckling, the hospital started outsourcing to the Qatari and Emirates governments. A doctor at the Emirates camp, which has a three-tent medical clinic, has also been authorized to work at a smaller hospital at on the border, where he stabilized wounded men brought out of the mountains in Libya. The Emirates camp even arranged for a gynecologist to visit regularly.

Tataoine hospital is sending some of its lab work to Qatar’s refugee operation at the Tataoine stadium, which has more modern equipment.

“They send us one or two cases a day,” said Osama Saleh al Zami, who runs the medical lab at the Qatari refugee camp. He showed a tent of lab equipment, refrigerators, and boxes of medicine, some from Tunisia but most from Qatar, he said, because the labels were in Arabic, rather than French, which he doesn’t speak. Zami’s assistant, Mohamed ben Amar, had been on staff at Tataoine hospital, but now splits his time at Qatar’s lab, because the pay is better, he said.… Read More