A friend passes along this interesting State Department email, filed over the weekend from Djerba, in southern Tunisia. It is fine,
except I wish the writer had said "pro-Qaddafi" forces stedda "pro-Libya"
:
Spent a few minutes chatting with the Egyptians in the camp
outside the airport and also on board the aircraft in order to answer any
questions the refugees may have and to put an American face on the mission as
there were no Arabic speaking crew on board. A few points the Egyptians brought
up:
All Egyptians felt very well taken care of. They said they had all the food,
all the water and all the medicine they needed. They were very thankful to the
Tunisian people and the Tunisian government and said they felt very welcome and
had been handled with kindness. Egyptians can be seen walking around the
airport with Tunisian Flags pinned to their suitcases or clothing. On Friday
night, we witnessed a dueling cheerleading match where one group of approximately
200 Egyptians in a cordoned off block in the terminal started shouting cheers
to Tunis and waving a single Tunisian flag. A second cordon of Egyptians
one-upped the first by singing, waving dozens of Tunisian flags in a spinning
dancing circle while they hoisted a Tunisian man in the center of the mass on
their shoulders. That's probably my first Egyptian Tunisian Pep Rally.
The Egyptians were well aware of international support. All Egyptians noted and
were thankful for predominant and overwhelming western humanitarian
transportation support and specifically named the Spanish, Italian, British and
French governments. Only a few (despite the fact that they were on an American
aircraft) mentioned the American government humanitarian support. Apparently,
American involvement has not filtered down to this batch of refugees. A few
asked if America was going to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and hoped that
we would.
For one group, humanitarian support (or perceived lack thereof) of the Arabs
nations was a point of anger.
They felt only the West was chartering flights for them and that the Arab
states had not come to their aid (I can't confirm the factuality of that
statement, but if this is not true, then the Arab states are not doing a great
job publicizing their aid). Another group mentioned that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain
and Qatar had provided them with food in the camp.
All Egyptians appeared in good spirits, were happy to be going to home to their
"new Egypt" and were calm and understanding of the difficulty
involved with getting them home. Two groups were very insistent on telling me
their trials and tribulations of coming across the border. All had left 6-7
days ago from various parts of Libya by car or buses. When confronted by
Pro-Libya forces, they were accused of being members of the "Egyptian
Mafia", all money was taken from them, cameras were taken and smashed, and
cell phones were either destroyed or their simcards were taken from them.
All refugees I talked to fled their corner of Libya 6-7 days ago. They had
spent 3 days on the run in Libya, one 1 day on the border, 1 day in the camp,
and 2 days at the airport before being flown home.
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