Palestinians trickling back to Nahr Al-Bared camp tell of a burned, looted scene of desolation, Lucy Fielder reports Abu Jaber returned to the devastated Nahr Al-Bared camp on the first day the army allowed a few Palestinian refugees back. His house, miraculously, stood amid the ruins, damaged but furnished and repairable. Now, "I went back a few days ago and it was burned from the inside, along with all the furniture, and the fridge and other things were gone," the local official from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said. "There's no one there but the army." Lebanon's army denies allegations of burning and looting the camp after its battle with Al-Qaeda-inspired militants Fatah Al-Islam ended 2 September, or of allowing local people to do so. But many witnesses back up Abu Jaber's story, and echo with similar accounts. Local non- governmental organisations and activists back the claims too. "They burned and robbed the houses, some witnesses saw them. They've still been burning them since people moved back in," said Khaled Yamani, a resident of neighbouring Baddawi camp and coordinator for the Nahr Al-Bared Relief Campaign and other organisations. "We used to have good relations with the army and local people. Fatah Al-Islam is not even a Palestinian group." Fatah Al-Islam was comprised of members from many Arab countries, including some Palestinians and Lebanese. Shops were also looted in Nahr Al-Bared, which had a thriving market serving swathes of the neighbouring northern Akkar region, Yamani and other witnesses said. Journalists are not allowed to enter the camp, but looking across a field from the road in late October, Nahr Al-Bared's ruins rose in a ghastly pile of dust, rubble and leaning walls. From the invisible depths of the camp, black smoke spiralled into the autumn sky. In a state school in Baddawi town that has become a squalid and rubbish-strewn refuge for about 150 Palestinians, Dalal Sharaf shows pictures of her burnt home on her mobile phone. Walls that still stand are blackened and rubble and debris litters the bare rooms. It appears to have been torched from the inside. "UNRWA [the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees] says they'll give people rent but they told me 'No, you have a home'. That's my home," she says, pointing to the picture. At the time of writing, UNRWA was due to house refugees from the school in temporary accommodation following protests by local parents angry that term has started and their children remain at home. Refugees at the school said they understood the parents' frustration. "But we're not here because we want to be," said Souad Al-Sayed, mother of a four-month-old boy born since they fled the camp. During the three-month siege, which started 20 May, scores of Palestinians reported beatings and torture at the hands of the army and security forces, their allegations backed by Human Rights Watch and other groups. The army denied the charges. The siege started with a police raid on a hideout allegedly linked to Fatah Al-Islam. In response, gunmen from the group based in Nahr Al-Bared overran a checkpoint outside the camp in a revenge attack that claimed the lives of 33 soldiers caught unawares. Since then, Lebanese anger has run high, stirred by the rising slaughter. By the end of the fighting at least 169 soldiers, 287 insurgents and 47 civilians had lost their lives. Publicity campaigns played a role in stirring patriotic fervour for the only institution -- the army -- seen as uniting the Lebanese. A billboard on the highway north of Beirut shows a fighter, swathed in a black scarf and armed to the teeth. "Terrorism has no place among us," it reads. Other campaigns have been more jingoistic, showing the Lebanese flag fluttering proudly on the rubble of Nahr Al-Bared. And many Lebanese, drawing on decades of resentment towards the Palestinians, have blamed the whole community for the fact that the then unknown group was set up in their midst last November, after splitting from Syrian-backed group Fatah Al-Intifada. Palestinians roundly condemn the group. Activists say Palestinians are subjected to stringent and often rough security checks at the camp entrances, and report that some beatings continue. Nahr Al-Bared remains off-limits to journalists and human rights groups, something humanitarian workers such as Yamani are pushing to overturn. Khaled Saghieh, a columnist for the pro- opposition newspaper Al-Akhbar, said not only should journalists be allowed in, but also an investigative committee. He asked: "who is afraid of the press and the media?" "It is as if the humiliation to which these civilians were subjected when they were forced to seek refuge in the Baddawi refugee camp was not enough and as if the material losses that they suffered when the fighting destroyed their earthly possessions was also not enough," he wrote. "All their property had to be put to the torch and racial slogans had to be dubbed on the walls of their houses." Saghieh said the "ghost of Elie Hobeika", accused of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre of an estimated 2,000 refugees and poor Lebanese, must be "exorcised from the Defence Ministry". "It is not enough to hold the army responsible by itself or to blame a number of undisciplined elements for what happened. The political authority didn't do anything in the first place." UNRWA has estimated that at least 85 per cent of homes in the camp were ruined or rendered inhabitable, with nearly all infrastructure destroyed. Up to 40,000 Palestinians are once again displaced, having spent a lifetime in the overcrowded camp, one of 12 in Lebanon that house just over half of 400,000 registered Palestinian refugees. They, their parents or grandparents were driven from their homes following Israel's creation in 1948. So the scale of the challenge is huge. And many Palestinians, coordinators and, if privately, foreign aid workers are unconvinced that a poorly funded UNRWA can or will rise to the challenge. "Let's just say they've been plodding along doing this for 60 years, and there was no change of gear with the latest emergency," one aid worker said, on condition of anonymity. Palestinians view the organisation as riddled with corruption. Yamani said the initial return in mid-October was a disaster. "People were allowed back in when there was no water or electricity. They didn't even give them things to clean their houses with." Most left Nahr Al-Bared with only the clothes on their backs and now own nothing. Matters have improved, he says, with water tanks brought in and the International Committee of the Red Cross launch of a programme to repair the damaged network and wells. Water remains insufficient for washing or sanitary needs, however. The Norwegian Refugee Council, Premiere Urgence and ACTED organisations have started to distribute toolkits so that returnees can begin repairs. UNRWA has built about 30 temporary homes on a plot of land in the "new camp" area, which were criticised as too small and unfinished when people were moved into them. With their bare brick walls, concrete floors and no glass in the windows, they have earned the nickname "cowsheds". Hundreds more are planned. "We acknowledge that they're small and we put them up very quickly to get people out of the difficult conditions they were living in," UNRWA spokeswoman Hoda Al-Samra Souabi said, adding that there were plans to build larger houses for bigger families. About 1,000 families -- or roughly 6,000 people -- are estimated to have returned to the "new camp", which is in fact urban sprawl beyond the camp proper owned by refugees who could afford to buy and build on the outskirts. Return is so far open only to a small number whose names are on army lists at the checkpoint. The "old camp", once an overcrowded warren of streets where the army and Fatah Al-Islam fought out their conflict, lies in total ruin and bristles with unexploded ordnance. It is likely to remain off-limits for several years. Hassan Faour, a Palestinian volunteer with Save the Children, reported scenes of horror when people returned and saw the ruins of all they owned. There is a widespread fear that the destruction of the camp and lack of state help thereafter are signs that Nahr Al-Bared will not be rebuilt. Alleged harassment adds to that impression. "People are starting to feel the Lebanese are doing all this because they want us to leave," Faour said. "Will Nahr Al-Bared ever be rebuilt? Who knows?"
