"War
Is The Total Failure
Of The Human Spirit."
By Dahr Jamail
28 July, 2006
Mother Jones
Ah,
the joys of reporting on a shoe-string budget! I've been working the
last few days with a freelance photographer from Holland, Raoul. It's
always helpful to team up—both for the companionship and to split
costs. Sometimes it's necessary, working in a war zone in a foreign
country where you don't speak the language well enough to get by on
your own, to hire a driver, interpreter, and fixer. So costs add up
fast, on top of the hotel, feeding, and phones, which are always necessary.
Thus, Raoul and I once again
hit the streets after deciding to split the costs of a driver. Not a
professional driver, mind you, but one we hired on the cheap. This means
he wasn't used to working for journalists.
He arrived late—long
after the time we were supposed to meet the person we'd hoped to interview,
so we jumped in the car and asked him to step on it.
Nadim, the driver, a skinny
29 year-old college grad who, like so many Lebanese, is without a regular
job, slowly made his way over to the infamous Sabra refugee camp, where
in 1982 Lebanese Christian militiamen massacred hundreds of innocent
Palestinians.
My eyes dart back and forth
between my watch and the road, as driving here always entails the obstacle
course of scooters, women walking with children in tow, the odd dump
truck hogging the entire road, and loads of other cars. Even though
so many residents have long since fled Beirut, traffic is alive and
well in many districts of the capital city.
Suddenly Nadim pulls over
and opens his door. While he's halfway out of the car he barks, "I
have to eat."
I hold my hands up and spin
around to find Raoul doing the same. "What can we do?" he
asks. We stare at Nadim as he waits patiently at a bread stand while
I continue to glance at my watch, watching the minutes tick off.
Five ticks later Nadim is
back and lowering himself back into his seat. "I was hungry,"
he says, turning the ignition.
Luckily for us, the guy we're
here to interview, Ahmad, a co-founder of the NGO Popular Aid for Relief
and Development (PARD), meets us with a smile near his office. We pay
Nadim, coldly thank him for his time, and let him know we won't be needing
his services again. (Raoul and I agree to use a taxi service later for
the return leg.)
Ahmad Halimeh, is one of
those people who is always smiling, and always busy as hell. He brings
us tea and we talk in his office. He says, "Our NGO, originally
designed to serve the Palestinian refugees here in Sabra camp with health
and education services, is now 90 percent engaged in working to bring
relief to the war refugees from the south."
With a staff of 20 volunteers
and a few office workers, PARD is offering its medical services to over
100 families who were displaced from their homes in south Beirut and
southern Lebanon. They are running a mobile clinic which is currently
in the south, and also managing to find shelter for many of the families.
Our time with Ahmad highlights
the dual nature of war—that it simultaneously brings out the worst
in some human beings and the best in others. Ahmad and his organization
are a bright spot in the darkness that has engulfed Lebanon, as the
Israeli government has obtained a sort of eternal green light from the
U.S. to carry on as long as it deems necessary.
"War is the total failure
of the human spirit," says British journalist Robert Fisk, which
I think encapsulates it better than just about anything I have heard.
But war forces humans to
survive under seemingly impossible circumstances, and in these conditions
some strive to help others when barely capable of helping themselves.
We talk with Ahmad for a
couple of hours and then tour the camp where so many hundreds of innocent
civilians were slaughtered in 1982.
Later in the afternoon I
met up with my friend Hanin, a Swedish journalist of Palestinian descent,
who'd just returned from two days in Sidon, 20 miles south of here.
"The bombs are everywhere,
and there are thousands of families there with nothing and nowhere to
go," she tells me. She was clearly traumatized after seeing bodies
scorched by white phosphorous, and others cut to shreds by what were
most likely cluster bombs.
After seeing similar atrocities
in Iraq, I tell her what I knew of PTSD, and that she needs to get some
sleep then start talking about what she saw.
"I spent time with a
little girl who told me her brother and father were killed," she
says, beginning to cry, "And the girl asked me if my brother and
father were alive. I told her, yes, they were." She drops her head
in her hands and weeps.
War is indeed the total failure
of the human spirit. And unfortunately, the decrepit, despicable stench
of this war is everywhere you turn in Beirut. And I wonder and wish
and ask myself why people like Ahmad aren't allowed to govern. Instead
they have to pick up the pieces generated by those who do.
Originally posted on Mother
Jones website: www.motherjones.com