by Hanna Gabriella Snarberg

06 December 2006

UNIFIL Humanitarian Assistance in South Lebanon following the Israeli – Hezbollah conflict

In the end of August, myself, a UNV volunteer Press Officer with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)  in Naqoura and the UNIFIL cameraman Bob Sullivan traveled with the Indian battalion’s (INDBATT) Public Information Officer Maj. Pandey and five other Indian military officers through their area of operations in South East Lebanon. The purpose: to get first-hand information on the level of destruction during the war  and to report on UNIFIL humanitarian assistance in South Lebanon.

We started from Indian Headquarters in Ebl Es Saqi and went to a village called Halta, where Maj. Acharya Mamta, an Indian Medical Officer, was just putting out a small table in front of the local Clinic when we arrived. Even before she had time to set up all her necessary medical equipment on the table, approximately twenty people, mainly elderly women and children, gathered around her, waiting for their medical check up. Almost every day Maj. Mamta goes to the villages, rotating between 20 local Medical Clinics, and provides assistance and treatment to the population.

Maj. Mamta is telling me that she receives many patients with different sorts of diseases and that people from South Lebanon to a great extent rely on UNIFIL and other humanitarian organizations when it came to health issues. “We are treating all kinds of diseases, everything from fever to wounds, to diabetes and sprained wrists,” said Maj. Mamta, “Medical treatment is very expensive for many people here in the south and so they come to INDBATT.” However, since humanitarian assistance is not the primary function of UNIFIL, it doesn’t have the financial resources needed and, therefore, the battalions fund most of the humanitarian work themselves.

I was just standing there, observing Doctor Mamta, when an elderly woman started talking to me in Arabic. One of the translators tried to explain to her that I was not a medical doctor, but she didn’t really care, she just wanted to talk to someone about the trouble she had with her head and stomach.

After our visit, we followed the Indian patrol to Khiam, a village about 4 km south of the Indian Headquarters. Although being a small hamlet, Khiam, like many other villages in the south, was badly hit during the war. We saw cluster bomblets scattered in the surrounding fields. Because the farmers are afraid to go there, the olive trees will die from neglect in the years ahead. A local boy from Khiam took us out to one of the fields and showed some of the cluster bomblets still lying around. At one point he even picked one up, held it between his thumb and forefinger saying: “dangerous, very dangerous”.

After this close call with the cluster bomb we joined the Indian battalion’s veterinarian, Lt. Col. Parasanali Bapu, to one of the farms close by. Bapu is UNIFIL’s only veterinarian. He treats hundreds of animals every week. “Many farmers fled during the war and they had to leave their cattle without food and water for a long time. Animals that survived are suffering from different stress related diseases, like diarrhea, and from wounds from cluster bombs. People’s live hood depends on these animals and I am here to provide veterinary help free of charge”, Bapu told us.

In the afternoon, on the way back to Naqoura Headquarters, we were driving very close to the Israeli boarder and at one point we were so near it that if we wanted we could even touch the fence separating Israel from Lebanon. On the other side we saw a civilian vehicle driving up a hill and an Israeli zeppelin floating silently in the air. Under two small man-made hills of soil, we knew that there were five Israeli tanks still hidden on the Lebanese side of the boarder. At that time the Israeli Defense Forces had not yet withdrawn from the area. I had that creepy feeling that I was observed but, then again, it was only just over two weeks since the ceasefire went into effect.

Homeward bound, we saw a lot of destruction: blown up houses, badly damaged roads. In some places we encountered whole villages razed to the ground. At one point we stopped the car to look at one of the destroyed houses and started a conversation with a group of people, one of them wearing a Hezbollah vest. An old man, standing there, was the owner of the house, or more correct, the ruins that once were his house.

“Thanks to Allah, the family was already in a safe place when the house was hit, but now we have nothing left,” said this man.

After a while we figured out that the Hezbollah-vested guy was an engineer and was probably helping this man repair his house. (Giving money and promising help to reconstruct destroyed houses is part of Hezbollah’s campaign to solidify the support it has).

During the half-hour drive back to Naqoura, we saw children playing in the street. We stepped out of the car to try to find out what was drawing their amused attention. There, right in front of us, almost in the middle of the street, was a 500 pound aerial bomb half hidden in the asphalt. A man was screaming at the children from a distance, probably trying to warn them about playing around with this dangerous “toy”. This was the second time we saw large unexploded devises on the road during our short trip through the back roads of South Lebanon. We were, off course, affected, knowing that we only witnessed a small part of the destruction inflicted by the July-August 2006 Israeli – Hezbollah conflict.

Most of the people we spoke with would not agree with a sentiment a British journalist once used as a title for his book “My war gone by, I miss it so…” The war ended, but nobody missed it, on the contrary, they hoped and prayed that it would not happen again.

According to Security Council resolution 425 (1978) and 426 (1978), the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was established to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, restore international peace and security and assist the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area. According to Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006) UNIFIL shall, in addition to carrying out it’s mandate, monitor the cessation of hostilities, accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the South, etc.

This year the Israeli – Hezbollah war, known in Lebanon as the July War, and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War, started on 12 July 2006 and ended on 14 August 2006 when the cessation of hostilities went into effect. Since then UNIFIL has cleared thousands of metres of roads, distributed 1,716,680 litres of water, and provided medical and dental treatment to over 12,500 animals. UNIFIL de-mining teams, most of them from the Chinese Battalion, have collected and destroyed approximately 3,500 unexploded ordnances.