Saturday, March 05, 2011
Editorial

While world media were awash Friday in stories of the battles for Zawiya and Raslanuf, with reports focusing on strategic outposts controlling oil and refineries, a humanitarian tragedy continued to unfold on Libya’s borders.
Estimates claim that approximately 180,000 people have fled Libya in the past 11 days, and tens of thousands remain stranded in the desert along the frontiers of Tunisia and Egypt. These people are in the main laborers and their families from Egypt and other African and South Asian nations, where they faced such miserable prospects that they were willing to move to a nation as star-crossed itself as the Libya of Moammar Gadhafi.

The U.N. high commissioner for refugees has called the situation a “logistical nightmare.” Those fleeing the turmoil report being robbed – some repeatedly – on their journeys to the borders. They sleep in the desert. The World Health Organization issued a warning of epidemics breaking out among the waiting hordes, as well as in the makeshift refugee camps that have sprung up on the Tunisian side of the border.

Most of the political and media attention stay limited to the course of the uprising and the shifting battle lines in Tripoli and elsewhere. To be sure, this uprising is an event of epochal import; in many of the towns surrounded by pro-Gadhafi forces, a humanitarian crisis among the Libyan populace is also emerging.

But in the volley of stories about the chess match between Gadhafi, the U.S., Europe and other Arab nations, the reality of the refugees dying in the desert and on the borders is being tragically overlooked by too many.
These are powerless people; their futures were already less than promising. They largely do not have anyone to whom they turn to in order to be afforded their most basic human rights.

Their home countries, whatever their limitations might be in their abilities to respond, are not giving enough attention to their citizens adrift in North Africa. Tunisia and Egypt have certainly lived through historical crises of their own in the past months, but they too must become more involved in addressing and ameliorating the burgeoning tragedy on their borders.

It is heartening to see that some in the world community are moving at last; the U.S., Britain and Germany have begun to transport many of those stranded to their home countries and have unveiled plans to ferry many more through airlifts and by boat. The European Union announced it would spend $42 million to stem the crisis; the World Food Program pledged more than $38 million to feed the refugee masses. With almost 200,000 people newly homeless in the African desert, much more remains to be done.