Syrian refugees flood to Lebanon

They may be buggers to find, but apparently there's some 90,000 Syrians thought to be in Lebanon taking refuge from the fighting across the border. The conditions in which they live differ greatly, but at the muddy end of the stick are a group who fled the embattled Babr Amr district in Homs and set up camp on a farm in the Bekaa valley near Chatura. As I said, finding these refugees can be tricky, and getting them to allow you to take pictures of them is neigh on impossible, due to fears of retribution for family members still left inside. However, a commission last week from Caritas – one of the many NGOs working diligently to offer what help they can – was a golden ticket into a story I've been bashing my head against repeatedly over the last year.

Human Rights Watch Report

It's been a long ol' time since I visited Qatar with Human Rights Watch last year, but they've finally used the pics (see more here) for their report on the conditions faced by migrant workers in Qatar as they begin putting the infrastructure together for the 2022 World Cup, Read the report here.

A walk around Beddawi

In the Beddawi refugee camp, just a few kilometers north of Tripoli, 20-something-thousand Palestinian exiles live within an area of around a single square kilometer. As far as Lebanon's camps go, this one is pretty relaxed, a far cry from the likes of Ain el Helweh. Conditions are hard, but easing; more and more of the 15,000 refugees from neighbouring the Nahr el Bared camp – whose presence doubled the population of Beddawi after the army razed their camp in 2007 – are now returning home. Population figures aside, the camp still suffers from the endemic maladies of Lebanon's Palestinian population; poor services, poor education and poor prospects for anything better anytime soon.

Why a .762 round is no joke

 These were taken while working on a story with the ever wise scribe Mr Josh Wood and talented translator Miss Naziha Baassiri, which will no doubt soon be gracing the pages of the International  Herald Tribune for y'all to read (hopefully with one of these pics). All three patients are suffering paralysis to some degree, which they claim is due to gunfire from government forces whilst they were attending protests, and are receiving treatment at a private hospital in Tripoli.

Picking up the pieces

I missed the fighting in Tripoli on Saturday but on Sunday, myself and colleagues Josh Wood and Zak Brophy went to sift through (almost still smoldering) the rubble. We saw residential apartments in both neighbourhoods that had been wrecked by RPG/Energa fire, with people from both sides claiming that the other was entirely to blame.  

This scenario is old news here, these neighbourhoods have been fighting for years. However, the current conflict in Syria has given them yet another reason to have at it, and sadly, likely the the funds to do so too. During the Civil War Lebanon was a sandpit in which the world waged its wars; it'll be a sad day if this becomes the case again.

Protests and potshots in Tripoli

A new sight for me at the Sunni anti-Assad protests in Tripoli (that'll be the Lebanese one) on Friday was a small female contingent, albeit separated from the male demonstrators by a rather stern chaperone.

 Following the protests, fighting erupted between militias in two neighbouring yet warring districts of the city. The hardline Sunni/Salafi and Alawite communities have been at each others' throats since the civil war but things are heating up here as it's now a sectarian microcosm for the fighting across the border in Syria. More about that from the tweets of the talented Mr. Joshua Wood here and the BBC. Sadly I filed too late too make the Reuters deadline, dammit.

Apologies for the watermarks but it's still an ongoing news story and bloggers are fond of stealing pictures and not attributing them.    

A sunni milita man runs beneath a Free Syrian Army flag as he heads toward the fighting.

Streets empty as gunfire rings out.

Tripoli residents cautiously peer down the street at Bab al-Tabbaneh, the Sunni neighbourhood  involved in the fighting.

So much for concrete

On January 15th, a seven story building just two blocks from my apartment collapsed, killing twenty seven of the inhabitants. While Lebanese civil society rallied around those that survived and the community mourned those that it had lost, the Lebanese government's response was nothing short of disgusting. See here, how two of the survivors were arrested while still in hospital for having incorrect work visas, and here,  how the residents of an entire nearby building have been kept out of their homes because opposing political groups are fighting over who gets the kudos of  sending in engineers and check that it's safe. This tragedy quickly became a photo op for Lebanon's political elite who shouted themselves hoarse trying to out do each other with condemnations and calls for investigations. 

For me, this was a coup; I sold picture to Reuters, one of the biggest news organisations in the world.   It's easy to feel like a vulture, gaining success from other's misfortune, but such photos and stories are essential if those responsible for such travesties are ever to be held to account.