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LEBANON: Assisting farming in Aadchit

  • Unable to harvest their crops due to unexploded bombs left over from the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, Fahes' family lost $12,000 in income in 2006 alone
  • Now that MAG has cleared her land, she can look forward to making a safe living again



Covered in baseball caps and traditional clothing, the two women are hard at work in the tobacco field a few kilometres from the city of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon. Hayat Fahes and her friend Aliya Hayak have spent a lifetime in the fields, and are out again today under the strong May sun.

Aliya Hayek (left) and Hayet Fahesin tending tobacco.

A tobacco field in Aadchit, May 2009.

[Photos: David Harbin/MAG]

Fahes is 55 and married to a man who has spent 45 of his 60 years as a farmer in Aadchit and the neighbouring towns of Jibchit and Kfar Sir. In 35 years of marriage, she has split her time between raising seven children and working in the fields. Despite surviving a heart attack and diabetes, she is still working.

She recalls the effects of the fierce 34-day war during the summer of 2006, which left the region littered with unexploded cluster submunitions. Fahes fled to a school housing refugees in Beirut till the conflict was over.

Upon her return, she and her family checked their fields, where they found the bombs hidden under the broad tobacco leaves. Unable to harvest their crops, her family lost $12,000 in income in 2006 alone.

Your donation to MAG helps us to move into current and former conflict zones to clear the remnants of those conflicts, enabling recovery and assisting the development of affected populations.

Fahes is a direct beneficiary at CBU 210 – one of 31 'Cluster Bomb Unit Strike Location' areas hit in Aadchit during the 2006 conflict – MAG has been clearing since January, with funding from the Government of Germany and the US Department of State.

As of 30 April 2009, 23,325 m2 of land had been made safe.

[Photo: JB Russell/MAG]

In 2007, Fahes was able to work on about 7,000 m2 of the 19,000 m2 of the land that she normally tends in Aadchit, Jibchit and Kfar Sir. With MAG steadily clearing land in those towns, she was gradually able to regain access to the fields.

Today, two days after MAG completed clearance on the land where she is now working, Fahes has access to all 19,000 m2 again, and looks forward to hiring the nine workers who normally help her during the harvesting season. Looking at the green leaves, she says: “I feel comfortable and can enter these fields without fear.”

Speaking of the clearance teams, Fahes says: “MAG could not have done any better. They did a complete and perfect job.”  She thanks the donors who made the work possible: “We could not pay to clear the land ourselves.”  She says that she prays for the safety of the searchers looking for unexploded bombs, and thinks of the fears of their parents.

Since the day is a workday, she's says she’s not dressed to impress. So she refuses to allow her face to be photographed, and returns to the field.

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11 May 09