Daily Archives: June 13, 2009

Women of Darfur

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Fourteen thousand feet above the barren landscape of Sudan an 18-year-old Antonov 30 carries some of the country’s most powerful women to Darfur. Among them are doctors, academics and the president’s legal advisor. They are heading for Al Fashir, the Northern capital, for a groundbreaking summit on challenges facing the region’s women.

It’s hard to grasp that this group of brightly dressed ladies being served refreshments in a small VIP charter aircraft are changing the face of the largest country in Africa. But this is no mile-high tea party and these are no ordinary women. Travelling with them is a voyage of discovery that dispels myth after myth and reveals some surprising facts about political realities in Sudan.

For instance, the fact that President Omar Al Bashir, the man recently indicted for war crimes by the ICC, (International Criminal Court) and represented as a bloodstained dictator by elements of the international media, is widely loved and respected for his role in empowering women. Secretary General of the National Council for Children’s Welfare, Amira Elfadil, says “He comes from within us all. He has a military background but he is a simple man, a man of the people, with good Islamic values. He speaks from his heart.”

Not all the conference’s 250 female delegates share her unqualified admiration for the man, but most of those I speak to admit that he and his coalition party offer the best hope of achieving enduring stability and peace in Darfur. When the ICC indictment was announced, women took to the streets of the capital to protest.

For many westerners Sudan, and Darfur particularly, represents a place where life for women is as harsh as its terrain. Victims of conflict, rape and violence, they are consistently depicted as helpless and rarely considered as a political entity. Yet female activism in this country is well established. Darfur was the first region to elect a female MP, Zakia Abdul Rahaman, in 1976. The Sudanese Women’s General Union was formed more than half a century ago and one of its members reminds me that in ancient times the old kingdom was “ruled by a queen, even before the pharoahs”. It is a tradition that fills them with pride.

They are proud also that a British politician has taken up their cause – Pakistani-born Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, who became the United Kingdom’s first Muslim life peer in 1998 and took his oath on the Koran. Controversial Ahmed, who owns up to a childhood more ’chip butty than silver spoon’, has become a champion of Darfur’s women. He operates as a neutral peace-broker under the banner of British Moslem rather than party politician, but he has clearly captured the hearts of many Darfuris and is welcomed in Al Fashir.

Ahmed’s initiative means a lot to Sudan’s women who are instinctively mistrustful of any UK/US intervention in their country. Ironically the ICC charge has united them in support of President Al Bashir and convinced many of those who were ambivalent that the international media are either too lazy to come and see for themselves how things are in Sudan, or already committed to an agenda.

Ahead of the main event Ahmed is a guest at the Sudanese Women’s Activity Centre in Khartoum, a city at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile and tipped by some to be the next Dubai.

The Centre was funded entirely by women, for women, and features a conference centre with simultaneous translation facilities, meeting rooms, and guest accommodation. Government Minister Theresa Siricio Iro speaks eloquently about the role conflict has played in the empowerment of Sudan’s women and adds: “There must be positive discrimination. We thank our government for listening to our problems. In the coming elections there will be a quota of 25 per cent for women, but we can get even more. ”

The conference in Al Fashir is a big deal for Darfur and the first of its kind. The delegates from Khartoum deplane to a reception worthy of royalty. Blinking into sunlight it takes several seconds for the images before us to resolve into what is clearly a huge welcoming crowd of women. Warm, friendly they sweep us along on a wave of excitement for refreshments and a brief meeting with the Wali (Governor). It’s the start of a surreal experience that deconstructs much of what is written about Sudan.

In Al Fashir it takes in two days of impassioned debate, a visit to IDP camp Abu Shouk, an interview with President Al Bashir and the man who tried to tell Chatham House about the real issues facing Sudan, Dr Ghazi Atabani. Atabani is leader of the majority National Congress Party; an urbane polymath he is adviser to the President and active in strategic studies and leadership training.

In August it will be 10 years since the US bombed the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals factory in Khartoum alleging intelligence that it was making weapons for Osama Bin Laden. This was soon disproved and the bombing seen as an act of malice and aggression by appalled Sudanese. The destruction created mass unemployment.

Atabani said at the time: “Workers, who a few hours before the incident had been happy and treasured hopes in this world, became jobless, with thousands of their dependants affected. Sudan as a whole, the sick, the poor, humans and animals, lost a precious source of medicine. It was a factory which was making available 50 to 100 per cent of various types of medicine for Sudanese citizens, and at affordable prices for the poor. In just a second this hope was shattered and the factory turned into a miserable scene of destruction and ruin.”

Today he is equally articulate about the ICC’s indictment and recent outcry about expulsion of 13 NGOs. “From our perspective it is an instrument of Western subjugation. Our culture is one where reconciliation is the rule and that is the spirit of what we are trying to achieve in Darfur. The ICC is seen as an organisation that is vindictive and retributive. That is alien to Africans.”

He points out that while more than 60 per cent of UN Security Council business concerns Africa, there are no permanent African representatives on the Council and Africa has no veto: ICC judgements are “ handed down as punishments” to countries unwilling to toe the US line, regardless of wider risks to ongoing peace and security processes.

The fact that Articles 13 and 16 give the UN Security Council freedom to step in and suspend proceedings that it does not approve of makes a mockery of its impartiality according to Atabani who wryly offers the Orwellian wisdom that while all animals are equal, some are ‘more equal than others’.

Dismissive though he is of the ICC ruling he is clearly frustrated by its effect on the ongoing peace process. “Why should the rebels sit down and negotiate with the Government when they can just wait for the ICC to do their job for them. Some rebel factions will use it as an excuse not to come to the peace talks.”

President Al Bashir acknowledges that there are big security problems in Darfur. “They started with the insurgency against the Government. We gave priority to finding a peaceful settlement and only after exhausting all possibilities did we decide that there was no option to military action.

“Wherever there is conflict civilians want to flee and look for secure places . . . in Darfur these citizens moved from conflict areas to Government controlled areas. The Government has a duty and responsibility to look after its people, provide them with shelter, food, water and basic services. The fact that it does this surely belies allegations that the Government practices ethnic cleansing, rape or genocide?”

An officially sponsored summary of what the government has achieved in Darfur includes “prosecuting suspected individuals from regular forces who committed violations against human rights”. Some were jailed; others, allegedly, sentenced to death.
In Abu Shouk many people are unsure who drove them out of their homes; some are past caring and simply accept that the camp offers a degree of safety. Some rebels have sought refuge in, or infiltrated the camps but security there is generally good and in 2007 there were only four murders.

Kaltoum Hamid is 45. She and her seven children have lived in Abu Shouk for six years. A four sqm sprawl it once housed more than 50,000 displaced persons. That number has reduced to just around 38,000. The camp has 17 schools, clinics and commercial activity based around a market, furniture manufacture and variety of cottage industries.

Kaltoum sells vegetables to survive and supplement the aid that is distributed. Driven out of her home in Korma she says it would be ‘too humiliating’ to go back. The family’s home was burned; her husband is now in Khartoum. Who drove them out ? She shrugs, looks around. “They wore military uniforms. Maybe Government troops? Janjaweed?”

It’s not a conversation she wants to have.

Elsewhere I meet Matar Mohammad and his family of 14.They live in a house with just two rooms. They came to the camp in 2004 from their home in Taweela. We had a good life,” he tells me. “I was a farmer growing tobacco, sorghum – now we depend on relief.”
He’s a proud man whose wife and children make us welcome, but sceptical about the prospect of speedy return. Security is the main problem. It’s a political game. Even the Janjaweed can’t control what happens in war.”

Matar lost relatives in the fighting and he’s unforgiving about Government failures. Although not a fan of Al Bashir he concedes that, with compensation, reconciliation could be possible, but only if security is assured.

Boundaries between the camp and Al Fashir are fluid; the refugees are not captives. Just a short drive away the women are starting the second day of their conference. Each has a personal issue; some burn with such passion to use this unique platform that they tussle over the microphone. Some have travelled for hundreds of miles to be there and they intend to be heard. They may speak from their hearts, but their presentations are underpinned by research and have academic rigour.

These are ardent, politicised women, fluently articulating concerns about violence, rape, education, healthcare, media manipulation and increased profile for women in the political process. They may not all see eye to eye, but unlike the region’s men they are willing to set aside their differences to pursue the greater goal of peace.

Any thoughts I had that this might have been an exercise in window dressing are rapidly dispelled as first the Wali of North Darfur, Osman Kibit, then later the President acknowledge their relevance and power. Kibit told them: “The Holy Koran says that a man who honours women is an honourable man. The women of Darfur have a special role – they are our nurturers, mothers, wives, sisters, providers of food and clothing, agricultural pioneers, carers of animals. Our women are influential through their poetry and their understanding; their energy can be a strong positive force if harnessed. God created this land for these beautiful creatures – but sadly they are also targets and violations happen in war.

“We need to tackle the issues with neutrality and comprehensively – not just in terms of the IDP camps but the whole community of Darfur. The eyes of the world are on Darfur; the decisions made here by Sudanese women can have far-reaching effects. The challenge is to harmonise local efforts with those at national level.”

Community Development Association delegate Saffa Adam echoed this: “We have good laws but we need women to put them to good order and use politics as a tool to rebuild our communities. Sudan has no real future until Darfur’s issues are resolved.”

Amira Elfadil is a lifelong supporter of Al Bashir. An attractive, 42-year-old mother of four from central Sudan she is well-travelled and educated. She first visited Darfur 10 years ago and has an outsider’s perspective on developments there. “It’s better in many ways – not in others. Just a year ago it was impossible to enter the camp (Abu Shouk). It was just five minutes from the airport, but ruled by factions. Now that has all changed.”

Like many Elfadil believes that the constant conflict and insecurity has also changed Darfur’s people. “Before the wars they were different; dignified, hard working, traders, builders and farmers. But events have changed the fabric of society here; people sit in the camps doing nothing; their children either leave to beg or join the rebels. Or they just sit and wait.”

No-one understands better than women how important children are to Darfur’s future. Elfadil says “In a post-conflict society many fathers are either dead or have fled; 30 per cent of households are headed by women. Many children drop out of school, get caught up in street violence or recruited by rebels. Then they are taken over the border to places like Chad and trained as soldiers.

“One rebel gang fighting the Government started the conflict; now, according to the UN, there are at least 16 factions and it is no longer a local issue but a global one. ”
In response to this Darfur’s peace hungry women want action and are bullish about driving it from community to capital. It’s easy to forget that they are subject to the same Sharia Law that is used to subjugate their sisters in Afghanistan. Amira, whose first degree is in sociology, has a theory.

“We are different because we are African/Arabs and when Islam came here in the 13th century it came through trade, not war. When I go to places like Saudi Arabia I thank God that I’m Sudanese. “

Women are represented in most professions, including the police force. The Wali has a female advisor, the state has a female high court judge, the government has appointed women prosecutors in the IDP camps to trace violations of women’s’ rights and investigate cases of violence. “Men are preferred when it comes to promotion, but no jobs are restricted,” says Amira.

Is the support of one foreign male significant I wonder, as the conversation turns to Lord Ahmed’s British Moslems’ initiative and presence at the Women’s Conference. Surprisingly her answer is an emphatic “Yes”.

“Last time he came people were surprised. There were reports on TV and it had a big impact. I don’t think he’s naive. His support won’t solve our problems, but it really counts.”
International media reportage is a big issue and the conference delegates make much of how the Darfur issue has been ‘spun’ to seduce celebrities, charities and play into the hands of groups with their own agenda. This latter claim is made again by President Al Bashir when we meet in Khartoum.

Nimaat Bilal, author of a conference paper on information handling, is as scathing about the double standards of the Western media as Al Bashir and Atabani are about the ICC’s targeting of African indictees. She says “The West moves in accordance to (sic) specific strategies in which the information battle is the first step to achieve its goals and ends. The information media are used to prepare the community to accept political decisions and be ready for military intervention as necessary.” A technique familiar to all who recall the hysterical headlines about Saddam’s WMD capability.

Bilal goes further, claiming that within their own territories, Western media are committed to the principles of responsible journalism like ‘fact, depth, balance and fairness’. When dealing with the Third World, however, these principles are sacrificed on the altars of paranoia, Islamaphobia, political expediency and reluctance to look further than the well-rehearsed views of others. Western media ignore these principles and work according to their own purposes and desires.”

Some heavyweight issues get an airing at this landmark summit; outside the conference room another celebration is in place – a traditional circumcision ceremony for young boys celebrating the rite of passage from childhood to manhood. By evening the two events have converged and raised index fingers are waved to the peace chant of ‘Salaam, Salaam, Salaam Darfur’.
As the women prepare to leave for their flights to other countries or various parts of Sudan I wonder whether anything will change as a result of this event.

As euphoria gives way to practicality we are reminded that this is a country with a coalition government, serious domestic problems and an election scheduled for 2010. The peace of the Wali’s compound is, perhaps, illusory. Can the women really make a difference?

Flying back to Khartoum I sit with one of the most respected delegates, Rajaa Hassan Khalifa, Secretary General of the Sudan Women’s General Union. Re-elected twice, not even her huge popularity can get her a third term at the helm of this 3 million-strong organisation with its 27,000 branches throughout Sudan.

As pressure groups for women’s’ rights go, WGU is monolithic, networking between NGOs on health, education, economics, peace and awareness raising. Rajaa is in no doubt that what the union has achieved in all these areas is considerable . “But we want the world to know about the women of Sudan and their work in Darfur. We are glad that people like Lord Ahmed come because we know that others care and want to help and that is good for morale.”

On my way back to London I travel in the company of another impressive Sudanese woman; Amna Akeelo, a mother of seven now living in Loughborough. Born in Ed Da’ein, in North Darfur, she has been married to an Englishman since 1984, but visits her extended family in Sudan regularly. Amna’s conversation revolves around a more domestic perspective of what’s needed such as facilities to help the disabled, and those suffering from depression.

“My family have not ever been refugees but many have had to relocate for economic reasons due to the recent history of Darfur. It is true to say we have all shared in the suffering of our Darfur brothers and sisters. They feel more secure now but so many people need help with things like aids to study and work.”

Amna is happy in Loughborough but Darfur is where her heart is and she speaks poignantly about childhood evenings enjoying the peace by firelight. A woman of many talents she has recently opened a shop in Loughborough offering products from Darfur and services based on skills she learned there.

“When I was young we sat under the trees and learned many skills like hair braiding and hand painting with henna. In the shop we also do these things and sell home-made perfume, sandalwood, dilka, Sudanese products and abayahs.”
The shop is very much a family affair and Amna’s eldest daughter Zara, 23, is heavily involved in it.

Amna may have been a long time away from home, but listening to her describe the entrepreneurial skills that she is developing to help her family and her people I realise that I have met yet another phenomenal Sudanese woman!

ENDS

NOTE: The conference on Challenges Facing Women in Darfur was organised by the Sudanese Women’s General Union & International University of Sudan in co-operation with the British Moslems Commission. It was held in Al Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, May 23-25,2009.

Bourj al Bourajneh: Whatever happened to Pauline’s people?

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(Pictures by Glyn Strong)

Twenty four years ago, a young Hertfordshire surgeon was caught at the epicentre of a war. In her darkest moments she expected to die.
Today, on a bright spring morning, Dr Pauline Cutting and her Dutch GP husband Ben Alofs reflect on that time from the sunny farmhouse kitchen of their rambling Welsh home. This former rectory, surrounded by trees and set well back from the main road, has been a haven to them for 15 years. Their two children have grown up here. A large, cream Labrador grunts and snores in a basket on the floor. The location is peaceful, but the conversation is becoming increasingly animated. We are talking about Gaza, Palestine and the 61-year-old elephant in the room that no-one wants to acknowledge.

Two decades ago Cutting was thrust into the limelight by bloody conflict when she brought the siege of Lebanon’s Bourj al Bourajneh refugee camp to a disbelieving world. Through a makeshift radio/telephone link, set up by one of her medical colleagues, she broke the news of how the camp’s inhabitants were being systematically starved to death. Before the impact of her words had sunk in, images followed. A few photographers and journalists had got into the camp and seen the refugees’ plight for themselves. The situation was desperate. Cutting and her colleagues were eating dogs to survive.
As a volunteer surgeon she was part of a small medical team trapped in the camp and under siege by the Amal militia. Like 80 per cent of those in Gaza today, its inhabitants were dispossessed Palestinians.
Wandering round its gloomy, labyrinthine alleys, ducking under dangerous low-hanging loops of electrical cable , I wonder what went wrong. Why, after the reportage that so dramatically highlighted their plight in 1985, did Cutting’s ‘Children of the Siege’ disappear from the world’s radar?
Of course, Cutting was only a minor player in a political drama that has run longer than The Mousetrap. Her abiding memories are not of the medical challenges, gnawing hunger or daily danger, but the “small acts of kindness” from families who had next to nothing. No artillery rains down on the camp now, nor is it under siege, but the Palestinian community of Bourj al Bourajneh still has next to nothing .

In my memory Cutting is the slim, sharp-featured young doctor with a curtain of long hair, whose features dominated the evening news for a period of weeks during the ‘eighties. Today she is 57 and slightly less lean, but no less passionate or articulate.
As a volunteer with MAP (Medical Aid for Palestine) Cutting spent 18 months in Lebanon, performing emergency surgery in makeshift operating theatres, treating sick and wounded men, women and children.
Against a background of bombardment and sniper fire she and her medical comrades worked tirelessly, as supplies of food and drugs dwindled away. Cutting got head lice, lost so much body weight that she was often faint and watched mothers feed their starving children with grass.
As conditions deteriorated Cutting famously said: “We will stay with the people of the camp until the danger is over. We will remain with them – to live or die with them.”

Many did die. Some lost limbs or, like seven year old Bilal, were paralysed by a sniper’s bullet.
Others just starved. A (Time) magazine report on 23 February 1987 described Bourj as being “on the brink of cannibalism”. Residents had already resorted to eating rats. A Sunni cleric sought clarification on whether it would be permissible to eat human flesh if it became necessary for survival. Eventually the siege was lifted and Pauline Cutting came home.

But the real story didn’t end there and more than 20 years later the camp still exists; it is still dependent on organisations like UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), NGOs and volunteers. It is still a ‘temporary’ home to people who dream of returning to places that exist only in their hearts and minds.

The journey that took me to North Wales and then Beirut – where many Palestinians still speak with warmth of ‘Dr Pauline’ – was prompted by the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead , the Israeli Defence Force’s three week assault on Gaza , ostensibly to stop Hamas firing rockets into Israel and prevent it from re-arming. It began on 27 December and ended 22 days later.
During this onslaught too, hospitals and medical volunteers came under fire; once again civilians were killed and maimed. Journalists and outraged NGO workers protested, bloggers and social networkers went into print with frenzy. But, paradoxically, it was probably the BBC’s decision not to screen a Disaster Emergency Committee aid appeal that brought the scale of the casualties to mass public attention in the UK. Briefly, thoughts of recession were put aside as Briton’s dug into their pockets to help Gaza’s victims.

At a MAP event in London, to mark the launch of The Lancet’s damning report on Palestinian Health in Gaza and the West Bank, Dr Swee Chai Ang projected a series of images that made her audience wince – the head of a decapitated child, lying in rubble like a grotesque football; a torso, so crudely stripped of limbs by an explosive device that it resembled raw meat; children with skin burned and seared by white phosphorous.

The real cause of this latest humanitarian tragedy pre-dates Cutting’s birth. It is a legacy of the 1948 Palestine War that resulted in establishment of the State of Israel. Celebrated by Jews worldwide the creation of this ‘homeland’ had another, less happy, outcome – the exodus of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians. Some fled voluntarily, intending to return as soon as the fighting ended; others were forcibly expelled. There are conflicting and contested accounts of how many left and why, but they are all deeply disturbing.

UN Resolution 194, passed in 1948, states that Palestinians have a right to return to their homes if they are willing to live in peace with their neighbours. Palestinian refugees want it implemented. Israel is resistant, seeing the possible return of millions of refugees as a threat to its existence. If Israel’s hope was that that the problem would go away as first generation exiles died, or the Palestinians become absorbed into their host countries, it was a vain one.

The Palestinian diaspora extends to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the West Bank. Sixty years after the event that created them their numbers have grown to over four million; at least 400,000 are in Lebanon – 10 percent of the population – and above 20,000 (officially the population of a large town in the UK) still in Bourj al Bourajneh.

Palestinians refer to their exile as the Nakbah (‘catastrophe’) – an event highlighted in the controversial drama ‘Go to Gaza, Drink the sea’ and Scottish artist Jane Frere’s powerful and haunting exhibition ‘Return of the Soul’. Both claim to be neutral statements about how things are; both have been attacked for being anti-Semitic. It is a subject that polarises opinion dramatically. Even Cutting and Alofs, in a clearly often exercised debate about forgiveness and war crimes, don’t always see eye to eye.

Palestinian children born during the camp siege that Cutting survived are still confined to the square kilometre that contains Bourj al Bourajneh. This foetid shanty town exists within, but apart from, the bustling cosmopolitan city of Beirut; its walls are not physical, but they are very real. They cut Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees off from 80 per cent of the country’s jobs, the freedom to travel, buy property and vote.

In effect, the camp is an open prison. It’s here that I meet another remarkable woman, Olfat Mahmoud from WHO (the Women’s Humanitarian Organisation). An activist, scholar, and vehement fighter for the Palestinians’ Right to Return to be recognised, she was born in Bourj al Bourajneh in 1960 and once worked alongside Pauline Cutting. Apart from overseas work and study trips, she never left.

“In the ‘60s, even as Palestinians we needed a pass to go from one camp to another, there were formal entry points and walls. Now we just have psychological walls. Today there are no checkpoints, but people feel safer inside the camps so they isolate themselves. In summer many Palestinians come here to Bourj al Burajneh, to visit their relatives. Instead of spending money on hotels they stay with their families and buy them TVs and fridges. People do watch the news, particularly during catastrophes, but in real terms, they have no idea what is going on outside, especially with women’s issues; they are not socially or politically aware.”

Smartly dressed and articulate, Mahmoud is not typical of the camp’s women. Through WHO, and in partnership with Lebanese charities like Al Jana (the Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts), her mission is to empower them. I meet her fresh from a meeting with the city’s mayor, in the ‘home’ she grew up in as an ‘exile’.

She’s a busy woman, but she’s also keen to talk about issues that are close to her heart . She’s unapologetic about her views – on Islam, Israel, the Nakbah, and on the plight of the refugee community’s women who suffer unique deprivations.

Mahmoud, who’s studying for a PhD, has just authored a paper[1] on the subject. It examines conditions and coping strategies and makes sobering reading. It is based on Bourj al Bourajneh but has application for all 12 of Lebanon’s camps. The country has the highest percentage of Palestine refugees classified as living in abject poverty and who are registered with the UNRWA’s special hardship programme.

Unlike other refugee populations, the Palestinians do not benefit from the protections and guarantees afforded by the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. Doubly damned they are anomalies even within the refugee population. UNRWA says: “They do not have social and civil rights, and have very limited access to the government’s public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. The majority rely entirely on UNRWA. Considered as foreigners, Palestine refugees are prohibited by law from working in more than 70 trades and professions. This has led to a very high rate of unemployment amongst the refugee population.”
The WHO workers have to contend with the legacies of tradition, culture and religion and need to tread carefully when dealing with all three.

Mahmoud sighs: “People say ‘Oh it’s a sin to do that!’ but when I ask them to explain why, they don’t know. Usually there is nothing in the Koran to support or explain these beliefs, they are just the products of tradition. “Many men use the Koran to frighten women. With the support of other groups and social workers we hold legal workshops to explain this. We went to the sheikh of the mosque here and said we wanted to see marriage and divorce explained to them properly from an Islamic perspective. There are lots of things people believe in that are not true and it makes their lives difficult. For example when you sign the marriage contract (and most sheiks don’t explain it) there is a question about whether you wish to make any conditions.

“Women can put any conditions they want, but usually they (the sheiks) don’t ask and women don’t know that they have that right. They can say ‘If we get divorced I want my children to be with me’. If the man disagrees then they know where they stand, and can refuse to get married. It is a proper contract, but not widely known about because everything is controlled by men.

“Then some women do know but are afraid or ashamed to ask because they think people will say ‘Even before marriage you think of divorce? What does this mean!’ So they dare not. We try to raise awareness of this. We say ’It is not shame; you need to protect yourself. It is your right.
The sheik here supports this, and he and a female charity worker run a workshop one and a half hours every week to explain these things.”

But with generations occupying the same households, and tradition being a part of the glue that holds them together, change does not come quickly.

Mahmoud is tackling issues that are challenging anywhere; in the closed world of a refugee camp they are intensified both by social problems and by the fact that anything to do with Palestinians seems to cause discomfort in the international community. She confronts both. “We want to reassure the organisations who fear what we do; we are not against Islam, only those people who try to use it. Islam is now always associated with terrorism and, I am being honest with you now, some NGOs are frightened about their future so they start to avoid touching on any Islamic point – but this is wrong. I say by doing this maybe you please western supporters, but you are losing your local community.”

Mahmoud is a true child of the camps, but she is also a rare and strong individual; rooted in Palestinian history she is, by dint of curiosity, hard work and determination, a powerful force for change. “My grandmother died in 2004 and she was 95 years old. Whatever I did she compared it to her life in Palestine, even after56 years. Every time I had a baby she would come and tell me about how she had her children in Palestine, never about her children born here; it’s as if her life here did not count, was not real. I inherited this house from her. It is the biggest house in the camp, but always she would complain and say ‘I used to have a big house, why am I in this sardine tin?’ Her generation were in this frozen state.

“My father was 12 and my mother around 10 when they left: every night we sat around the heater and they would tell us about Palestine – blindly I can describe my village; I have never been there but I can! Really they tell you every detail so always you have this spiritual link. My generation, we learned to fight – not with weapons, but against obstacles.

“The generation born during the civil war in Lebanon were just busy trying to survive. I too was born in a camp but I felt safe – my parents were so calm and they spent time with me. I compare it with nowadays and it’s not the same. Even in spite of the bombing and everything we felt protected. This generation just want to flee, to migrate, to get out.”

Like Cutting, Alofs and all medical staff who work selflessly through the dangers of war and conflict Mahmoud is dismissive of her own bravery but proud of her small triumphs. “I remember once many children had been injured. One girl had lost all her brothers and sisters. She was bleeding badly and urgently needed an operation. Her blood was AB negative, which is rare and we had none and there was heavy bombing . I said ‘Give me an ambulance and blood kit and I will get you blood’ and I went to all the military bases because that is where to find people. I tested all their blood and it was no, no, no – but by midnight I had been successful and managed to bring blood.

“This was in 1981, I was still a student, not even a qualified nurse. But I always believed in fate: if something will happen, it will happen – and that’s a strategy for coping.”

Years later, in July 2006, when Mahmoud was married with four children, she sat at her home near Beirut’s Arab University listening to bombing once again. Her heart was in the Bourj Al Barajneh refugee camp because it has surrounded by a bombardment areas in the southern suburb of Beirut.

“My husband is a director and Cinema photography – he was filming in Syria. I said to my children ‘ I can’t stay at home , I have to get to the camp. You know, people in the camp refused to leave their homes. They said: “we have been refugee once and we don’t want to repeat it. Also where to go!” They witnessed 33 days of war – day by day – just ‘next door’. I told my children ‘You stay at home and look after each other, if something goes wrong you go the neighbours’.
“ The airport road was empty apart from my car – I was the only one who was driving on it. It felt so strange. When I got to the camp we tried to organise things. I came every day for a whole month even Sundays.”

Before becoming a community worker Mahmoud qualified as a nurse and clinical trainer, studying in the UK , and Australia, but her returns to Lebanon always seemed to coincide with some kind of conflict. She laughs: “My friends used to say ‘When you travel, let us know please, so we can prepare for an emergency ’ . ”

Mahmoud got back to Lebanon from London in time for the February uprising in 1984 and from Australia for the first camp war. She had previously been working in the Palestinian Red Cross maternity hospital in Sabra camp and initially planned to stay there with a friend on her return. Luckily, because she had to rise early for work, she didn’t. The hospital was destroyed that night.

“It was 6.30, the first day of Ramadan,” she recalls. “My brother, who likes to sleep, was already up, so I asked him what was wrong.”

He told her that two bombs had fallen overnight in Bourj camp but Gaza hospital was damaged. Mahmoud said: “Just Last night I was in Gaza Hospital – Ramallah was Sabra’s maternity hospital, Gaza dealt with surgical cases but both of them are connected and known as Gaza hospital – this can’t be. He said ‘Believe me, everything is a mess, do not go and its not working anymore’.”

They put the radio on to hear reports of more bombing and heavy fighting. ”My mother of course went to the bakery for bread; this is the first thing women do, shop for war!”
For two more hours the family listened to confused reports of escalating violence until her second brother came home. “Why are you not at the hospital’’ he asked her. He didn’t mean the one in Sabra though. Haifa hospital in Bourj al Borajneh, where Mahmoud had been born and where later Pauline Cutting was to work, was full of casualties.

Mahmoud pauses. “He took me there and – oh my God – that is why I later quit nursing. It was dreadful.

“At that time, in 1985, it was not a hospital, just a polyclinic. It had a small first aid room for home accidents and a ward for disabled people. No staff nurse, and just one, young, Palestinian doctor who had qualified in Bulgaria. I felt very sorry for that doctor.” She found casualties piled up – the dead, the dying and those with only minor wounds mixed up together. It was a scene that recalled to her student images of Florence Nightingale, passing through the grim wards of Scutari with her lamp.

Pragmatic as ever, Mahmoud began to organise a triage assessment to prioritise the injuries. The clinic was pitifully ill-equipped to deal with the scale of the carnage. For a month she did “what nurses did not do”- removing bullets and shrapnel, debriding wounds and dealing with gangrene. The body count rose to 17 but there was no morgue . “It was the beginning of summer and getting hot. All we could do to help with the smell was to cover the bodies with lime.”

The Red Cross were allowed to enter just once. In desperation young people from the camp were trained to do simple first aid – prepare drips so that when there was heavy bombing the team was as ready as it could be. Eventually the bodies were buried together, around a memorial statue dedicated, ironically, to the Unknown Soldier.

Mahmoud’s memories of this day are accompanied by the muezzin’s call to prayer that echoes over the rooftops of Beirut. It adds to the poignancy of a recollection that still affects her profoundly.

This first camp war – and the intense period from May to June 1985 – predated significant MAP involvement or Pauline Cutting’s arrival. “There were no doctors during that war “says Mahmoud. “ I remember, one guy was injured in his back, so badly you could see the nerve ends. It was such a painful and sensitive wound. I said, ‘we can’t touch him, just change the dressing’. He had to lie on the floor because there were no beds. ”

His temperature soared and they thought he would die. Eventually, at five o’clock one morning when the snipers took their break, Mahmoud found time to examine him again. The wound was alive with maggots. Using saline applied by syringe, and a debriding knife, the team cleaned and dressed the man’s wounds. They did this again each morning, in the quiet hours when firing ceased for a short while. Against all odds, he lived. And today he is fine. He works in a bank,” she tells me with pleasure.

Eventually Walid, a staff nurse, joined the team which made a huge difference. They performed surgical procedures and dealt with femoral artery bleeding so successfully that doctors from Beirut later asked how they had managed to control it for seven days.

I too am intrigued! Mahmoud laughs. “I used pressure, fear – and ice! And it worked. Sometimes the blood spurted right up to the ceiling, but many of the people we saved are still alive, running around here, in this camp. One man is now in Sweden or Denmark I think – he was injured here (the groin) and all he kept asking was whether his (peals of laughter!) you know, was still working! That is a man. I said ‘you ask this silly question when you may die!’. But it was a bad time.”

“My generation were survivors. Today’s generation see themselves as victims, never knowing what is happening from day to day. And this is a big problem.”

But what do they want to survive as, I ask her; as Lebanese citizens? “No, no. I always say this: Lebanon is my second homeland. I was born here but I always look at it as my second home. The right to return is ours whether we exercise it and live in Palestine or not. We should be able to visit it; to have no other nationality, but Palestinian. And the first step is recognition. We know it is a process which means it will take time. It’s not a miracle that will happen within 24 hours, but you can’t ask someone to suffer while you are solving their problem.”

In the short term she believes that the refugees in Lebanon should be given the right to be in the country legally and be given Palestinian passports until details of the right to return are worked out. “At least they should give us this. After 61 years it brings great shame on the world not to have solved the problem.”

Bourj al Bourajneh camp has grown since Cutting and Alofs’ time; not outward, but upward, with rooms tacked on to already unsafe structures. When the refugees first arrived they lived in tents, expecting to leave at any time. Later when houses were built they were still seen as temporary structures; flimsy and cold in winter their thin walls soon displayed cracks and the tracks of running water.

On the roof of Mahmoud’s old home women are now being given the chance to do aerobics. “But first we need to put up screens,” she explains, “because they can be seen from everywhere at the moment.”

Physical exercise is difficult in a cramped warren with no space and little sunlight, in a culture where modesty is important. Inertia, frustration and chronic health problems perpetuate depression, feeding the edgy disaffection that permeates the camp. Another problem is the cycle of domestic violence that occurs.

WHO Youth Co-ordinator Zeina Salhani who works with Mahmoud says “We have to tell the children that a ruler is for making lines, not for hitting – and sometimes we have to tell the teachers also.”

Leaving the camp is like crossing an invisible line. Unlike the brick footprint that describes where the Berlin Wall used to run, Bourj’s boundaries are intangible. Within feet of its perimeter traffic flows, normal life goes on. Travelling by car to meet another former colleague of Pauline Cutting it is hard not to reflect on the irony of how impenetrable invisible boundaries can be.
Dr Mohammad Osman, is Secretary General of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The Federation is the world’s largest humanitarian organization and its millions of volunteers are active in 185 countries.

Osman is based at Akka Hospital and, like Mahmoud, does not live in a refugee camp. His memories of the camp wars, between 1985-87, are vivid. “Sometimes we got permission to visit the hospitals – and this is how I met Dr Pauline, at the beginning of the war. I met her in Haifa hospital. Later on we became very good friends. We appreciated her and were also proud of her because she remained with us during very dangerous and difficult times, through the shelling of the camp, when there was no food.

“Through her and Ben, who was then a nurse and later became her husband, they made many appeals and through them we got support – medical supplies, medicine and sometimes equipment. During the cease fire we managed to get a generator for the hospital, but the most important thing was the moral support.

Images of events in Gaza were brought to world attention by technology that didn’t exist in the 1980s and without a fragile radio link the outcome of the camp wars could have been even worse as Osman recalls.

“Dr Pauline helped us through the media, by talking on the radio. At that time I was in the Red Cross HQ, where the media were camped – we couldn’t get to her but I talked to her by radio. There were many journalists here and when she talked they believed her – more than us! We had already said that people in the camps were eating grass and rats, but when she said it they believed her.

”The radio was the only way to contact our hospitals inside the camps – Bourj al Bourajneh and Shatilah where Dr Christoferou was. It was his suggestion. We spoke daily about the numbers of casualties, what was needed, all that was going on inside the camp, through this radio.” It was the radio that was to connect Cutting to her parents and then the outside world. “I still have it now!” says Osman.”Not to use – just as a memory.”

The significance of that lifeline for those trapped in the camp is something Osman will never forget. “At that time in all Lebanon there were no rules, nothing. It was chaos” he recalls.
After the camp wars ended he fell in love and, like Cutting and Alofs, married. The friendship forged in desperate time endured. “ Twice Pauline visited me – once with Ben, then with the children. We have photos together, their family and my family.

“After the camp wars we reconstructed our hospitals, field hospitals and primary care centres. Now we have five hospitals distributed around all Lebanon, and nine health centres, all for Palestinians – some inside the camps, some outside. Now we can concentrate on teaching the staff because, you know, during the war we just had to focus on the wounded people.

“Salaries are funded by the Palestine Liberation Organisation; others by NGOs and national societies, like MAP UK. And I must tell you, Dr Swee, from MAP, she was a hero. She drove our ambulance and met Pauline inside the camp. She is a great woman and I respect her like Pauline Cutting; she is fantastic, tiny but strong, very strong.”

Osman concedes that things have got better, despite the psychological problems and depression that afflicts many of the refugees. “Obviously it is much healthier and safer than it was during that time. The hospital has improved a lot, socially life got better, people were able to leave and repair their homes which were destroyed during the camp war. But in general the life of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is miserable. “I always say to foreign visitors and journalists, there is a big difference, between what you see on the TV what you see with your eyes on the ground. When you see the truth you can express it more.”

“The Palestinian refugees here in Lebanon are deprived of all kinds of rights, human rights, civil rights, but inside the camp they work. And we are very proud of our women, they have sacrificed a lot and keep Palestine in the minds of our children and protect our heritage.”
Can they qualify as doctors? He smiles ruefully: “Of course – if they have money! For example I qualified as a doctor in Moscow.” Like Mahmoud he won a scholarship, something that is now very difficult.

“I was born in Lebanon. I studied in UNRWA schools, but like all Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon we came from Palestine, from the area surrounding the city of Safad.”
Osman is a serious man who chooses his words carefully: “ I’m sure Palestinians will return, maybe not in our lifetime, but one day it is coming, the chance to go back to our homeland. Our village now is destroyed, but they did not build anything there. My father had land and I am not ready to give it to the Zionists. We are not against the Jews. Jews are people like us, but we are against the Zionistic movement.”

Each Palestinian’s experience of exile is different; but when we discuss Gaza all reactions are the same. Osman is quiet. After a deep breath he says “ There are no words to describe it . . . it is unbelievable. Killing the children it is . . . barbaric. Children, women, destroyed in cold blood; what is this! There is no justice in this world.

“The conscience of the British people should go back 60 years . No – more; to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. But let me tell you, when they came to make the documentary about Pauline (reference), on their last day I invited them for lunch. There was a – cameraman. I said ‘Your government is responsible for our Nakbah’ and he said ‘I am sorry Dr Osman. We are here to repair the wrongs of our grandfathers’ and I said ‘OK, I can drink with you now!’ It was a good day.

“We hope the day will come when those who think Palestinians are occupying Israel will know the truth about who occupied whom and how they took our land and would not even share it and have two states. They want to take everything . . . this situation is impossible.”

As I prepare to leave Dr Osman says “Tell the truth; what you see, what you hear yourself about the Palestinian refugees everywhere and especially here in Lebanon because it is the most complicated situation. For instance I am a doctor, but I cannot open my own clinic in Lebanon. We are not asking too much, just to have the minimum of dignity and social and civil liberty. No-one is asking for Lebanese passports, we are ready to live as refugees until there is a just resolution, but we want to feel we are human beings, able to bring up our children without war, and without suffering what we suffered. They have the right to live like any other children in the world, peacefully, to have a good education and participate in building a good society.”

In another part of Beirut, I meet a man whose life is dedicated to supporting that right.
Moatas Dajani, the founder of Al Jana, is a self confessed book hoarder. The fruits of his lifetime love affair with archaeology and other passions line the walls of the room we meet in. He shows me one called Moshe Dayan’s Collection, featuring artefacts from antiquity. “So what makes them Moshe Dayan’s eh? Where did the Israeli General acquire them from?” It is a rhetorical question.

Dajani is a Palestinian who has Jordanian citizenship, but his life is spent networking amongst the organisations dedicated to helping Lebanon’s disadvantaged communities, through creative activities.

A fourth generation of Palestinian children is now coming to terms with the reality of being born with refugee status. They face a political and economic future far bleaker than that which confronted their forebears, and with considerably weakened social and cultural resources to sustain them. Anger, frustration and the question ‘Why me?’ is almost inevitable.

Each year, older community members, who have been repositories of folklore, transmitters of collective memory, and links to the Palestinian past, become fewer. Camp schools concentrate on basic education and are poorly resourced to teach Palestinian culture, history, and folklore – the things that help to build young refugees’ sense of identity, and self-esteem. Al Jana’s conflict transformation program has been trying to address this since 1990.

Back at Bourj al Bourajneh I had seen evidence of these efforts and heard from Zaina about the short holidays it brokered. “The last was six weeks ago. We had 141 children and young people. We went to Faria, Jeita to the snow where there is the skiing and then we went to the fun fair, in Beirut. Although it’s only a short distance away in the heart of the city, camp children would never normally visit it. “

There are no gardens in Bourj al Bourajneh. Children of the camp are as much prisoners of its invisible walls as their parents says Zaina. “In the summer we take them to the river. Most of them like nature and whenever we go somewhere where it is green they love it. At the beginning of April we take them to the zoo, because we try to link our outdoor activities with something. We had a project showing them how to use the internet for research. Each child had to research an animal. At the zoo they saw the animal they had researched for real. Then we collected the research projects and made them into a book that will be kept in our library. Now children can learn directly from each others’ work.

“On our last trip we took parents and they enjoyed it as much as the children. The man at the fun fair joked that there should be a sign saying ‘Play Area For Mothers’ as well. Last summer we went to the beach, and a restaurant where they all sat down to eat and they were very, very happy. Without organisations like Al Jana these children would never do these things.”

Dajani believes that marginalised societies are very rich in terms of creative problem solving strategies and very culturally dynamic , even under siege. “There is no welfare state in Lebanon but we have a network of over 66 organisations working with children and youth and much of what we do is based around networking.

“We have four programmes; an active memory programme; an active learning and creative expression programme which uses the arts, like cinema, photography, film and music; since 2006 we have a conflict transformation programme and a youth media programme. So, primarily we are about producing learning materials based on cultural contributions.”

He shows me a project started in Bourj al Bourajneh and Shatila camps in 1998. It looked at issues that were of interest to the camps’ children and how they could express them through photography art, film-making and writing. “It was a four year process during which they made three internationally award-winning films and a publication that has been translated into four languages, which is all their own work – their photography, their art their reflections. It is called ‘I wish I were a bird’. The title is self-explanatory.

But Dajani is a pragmatist. What he – through Al Jana – has achieved is astounding; it even includes the founding of an international film festival. But it’s not without poignancy. One film is called ‘Neither here nor there’ – a touching record of how young Palestinians hoping to escape their prison found rejection in another country which also saw them as outsiders.

The Nakbah didn’t just affect those who left Palestine in 1948. It reached down the years to blight lives of future generations, robbing adults of dignity and self respect, depriving children of a childhood and a future.Richard Cook, Director of UNRWA Affairs for Lebanon, describes a situation of chronic underfunding for decades, particularly the last two. The world’s longest running refugee crisis has notched up a bill of around $10.5 billion since the agency’s inception in 1950.

Olfat Mahmoud believes that the passage of years makes no difference. “The problem of return is not about time or having the space. Of course there is space for Palestinians to return – and not only to Gaza and the West Bank, but to all Palestine. Most people would accept at least acknowledgement of this right, but you can’t keep a people suffering and not knowing what to do just because you have not agreed how to solve the problem!”

Recently a Palestinian embassy opened in Beirut, but Mahmoud says it is too early to say whether it will make a difference to those in the camps. She believes the international community paid attention to the building of the Palestinian Constitution but forget about the refugees.

“As Palestinians we lack any structure or representation in the camps. We are fed up with our situation, but over the years the world has been distracted by so many other situations, in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Our case is older but it has been set aside.”

The Palestinian refugee situation should have been resolved decades ago. It is one the international community have shied away from repeatedly, engaging only on an ad hoc basis when spikes of military activity, and the ‘collateral damage’ that comes in their wake, make it impossible to look away.

ENDS

[1] “Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon: Conditions and Challenges in Bourj al Bourajneh Camp. A study by WHO, authored by Olfat Mahmoud 2009.