Libyan Refugees In Limbo in Tunisia’s South
by Sam Kimball
Dehiba, Tunisia—Salih sits in loose brown traditional qamis and sirwal in the middle of a mosque still under construction, prayer rugs covering the unfinished concrete floor. He’s surrounded by other men clad in long robes and skull caps—refugees as well, from the Libyan town of Nalut—who work on the mosque by day as volunteers, work they say, which helps them “forget the problems at home.”
Salih came to Dehiba, a desert community in the south of Tunisia on the Libyan border, on April 10th with his family, fleeing the fighting going on around Nalut, about 70 kilometers east of Dehiba. Now, he and his family are one of 302 registered families living in the Dehiba area, though according to various reports, there are many other unregistered Libyan families here. Since they have left, the fighting has intensified in the area surrounding Nalut, as the Libyan rebels and pro-Gaddafi forces vie for control over the Nefusa mountains and the strategic border crossings, such as Wazin, in Libya just outside of Dehiba. Border crossings like Wazin have allowed the Libyan rebels to resupply and to give refuge to their families.
The conditions in which Salih and his family live in Dehiba are the norm for more than half of the two to three thousand refugees estimated to be living in Dehiba and its immediate surroundings: inhabiting a home with five other Libyan families, six children to a room, his house and others like it giving cramped shelter to between twenty and twenty five people at a time. They rely on donated food, medicine, and money from local Tunisians in Dehiba, and other nearby towns like Tataouine and Ramada.
Many of the Libyans from Nalut were employed in white-collar jobs before fleeing the fighting in their home region. Salih himself was a school administrator, and before that worked in hospital administration. The Libyan refugee community in Dehiba holds to its traditionally conservative character, where the separation of the sexes in public spaces is rigid, women spend much of the day doing domestic work, and finding a woman in the street is rare. Yet, Salih and his fellow Libyans working on the mosque report that many of the women fleeing from Nalut and surrounding cities were previously employed. Some, they claim, had degrees from higher institutes of education, and worked as teachers of English, chemistry, and biology.
Despite the purported middle class background of many of the Nalut refugees living outside the refugee camps, the financial straights grow tighter as time passes. Donations of money from local Tunisians are critical these days, as Salih reports that the refugees’ accounts in Libyan banks have been locked down. Allowances allotted to the refugee families by Libyan merchants, who make small deposits in local banks, have dwindled to one-hundred Libyan Dinar per family per month, the equivalent of about eighty-three American dollars. “No money to buy Benzine… no fuel to use to visit our relatives in Nalut. The only time we use a car is for an emergency, like bringing a woman giving birth to the hospital.”
Integrating into the local educational system, even temporarily, has proven an equal challenge. Libyan refugees in Dehiba have claimed that that their children are falling behind in their studies because there is no room left for them in Tunisian schools in small towns like Dehiba. Libyan parents also fear that even if their children find a place in local schools, because of the major differences with the Libyan educational system, their grades may not be recognized and they will be held back.
Those without a large family to care for find the conditions in Tunisia less straining. Fethi, a farmer who was working just outside Nalut who came to Tunisia over two weeks ago, and now a fighter in the Libyan rebel forces, lives with just his mother and father in a four-room house. The house, which had served as an investment property, was donated by Tunisians. He says, “The Tunisians give us houses, food, medicine. We have everything we need.”
Fethi reports that most able-bodied young men like him are still in Nalut, and spend most of their time there. He himself sometimes leaves Dehiba to return to Nalut for a couple of days at a time. In Libya, he and other young men continue to fight in the rebel forces or protect their property in their home towns.
Yet, Fethi does admit that despite the relatively comfortable conditions, his mother and father are scared by the heavy fighting over the border pass a few kilometers east of Dehiba. The explosions of the battles between pro-Qaddafi regiments and the Libyan rebels, as well as Tunisian military that guard against incursions into Tunisia, are heard from late-afternoon onwards. The flashes of rockets and machine gun fire can be seen from hilltops on a clear night.
The situation for Libyans living in the refugee camps inside the Tunisian border is different from those getting by in donated Tunisian homes just down the dusty streets of Dehiba. According to Tunisian military personnel, there are now seven refugee camps inside Tunisia. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Red Crescent, which established a camp for Libyan refugees spilling into Dehiba at the end of March, has been one of four umbrella organizations said to be officially responsible for caring for Libyan refugees in Tunisia. The others—the U.N., Tunisian Red Cross, and Tunisian Red Crescent—have had a larger presence further north, at the Ras Jdir refugee camp on the coast, which gained prominence early in the Libyan conflict as the entry point for countless thousands of migrant workers from Libya.
At Ras Jdir, reports a doctor with the UAE Red Crescent in Dehiba, refugees of Libyan nationality were better-off financially than those entering here in southern Tunisia, and were able to make a comfortable place for themselves, staying in hotels and apartments, as opposed to tents.
Here, however, 890 Libyan refugees find themselves living in khaki tents arranged in neat rows, the Tunisian and Emirati flags flying above, guarded by Tunisian military personnel with automatic rifles. Their food and medical supply in stable, provided by the UAE Red Crescent, with assistance from Médecins Sans Frontières. The camp’s staff is composed mostly of Tunisian volunteers and day workers. By the looks of it, the camp is well-maintained and secure.
Yet, the Libyans in the camps are not unconcerned. One of the main worries for Libyans in the camp is the safety of their relatives still inside Libya, including many of the fathers and husbands of the camp’s families. Depending on the security situation at the border from day to day, reports a UAE Red Crescent doctor, some families from the camp move back and forth from Dehiba and its environs to their hometowns in Libya, hoping to reoccupy their homes and reunite with family members.
The other danger for families in the camps is that of saboteurs sent into camps posing as refugees. According to a Libyan doctor and a UAE Red Crescent doctor in Dehiba, Libyans as well as some Tunisians have been paid by Qaddafi forces to start trouble in the refugee camps. This is in the hope that the Tunisian authorities will eject the refugees and stop providing asylum to Libyan rebels. “But,” says the Libyan doctor regarding the saboteurs, “the Tunisians know now what is happening. They know these people don’t represent the refugees.”
The future is uncertain for the Libyans taking refuge in this small neighbor nation. Some, like Fethi, the Libyan rebel, are nonchalant when posed with the question of when he and his family will be able to return home permanently. “Gaddafi could go tomorrow; he could go in a month. I don’t know, but I’m not worried.”
Salih, however, is more wary. He knows that he and his family must return home to Nalut before the summer months begin in a few weeks to avoid the heat in Dehiba, which will make his family’s overcrowded accommodation unbearable. He says the situation here makes him and other refugees tense and anxious. As for if his family can return to Libya for good anytime soon, he says, “We hope. But, we don’t know if we will.”
