A 12-month project by MAG ‘Battle Area Clearance’ teams in Lebanon is helping people like restaurant owner Hussein Sami Ismael to get their lives back on track.
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Hussein Sami Ismael (foreground) and his son Samer overlooking the Litani river gorge in Zawtar East, May 2009. |
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The Shahar Restaurant and grounds. [Photos: David Harbin / MAG] |
The presence of cluster bombs in the area meant that, until MAG began work here in January, the Shahar Restaurant sat empty and unused following the 2006 war. Ismael lost out on the US$4,000 a year of summer seasonal income that would support his family of four and was unable to carry out his plan to hire five part-time workers.
Located along a steep and winding road that still bears the imprint of tank tracks, the restaurant (its name meaning ‘cliff’ in Arabic) sits precariously over the Litani river gorge.
Ismael built it with his own hands, as part of a plan to supplement his part-time job of maintaining and repairing telephone lines. His family’s plot of land on the rocky hillside cannot be used for agriculture, but does have a spectacular view of the river hundreds of metres below, and people are naturally drawn to the site for its spectacular views.
Ismael recalls the war, when he had just about completed building his restaurant after years of work. The intense fighting drove most residents of the nearby village of Zawtar East to seek refuge in the north, including himself.
When the ceasefire was declared, Ismael was part of the mass migration back to southern Lebanon. He found the road and fields by the restaurant littered with hundreds of cluster submunitions.
A MAG Rapid Response Team carried out emergency clearance of the road in the weeks after the war but, as the restaurant was in an isolated area and therefore considered a lower clearance priority compared to the town centres, the cluster bombs hidden in bushes and under the earth had to wait to be cleared.
The only visitors to the restaurant were occasional picnickers, who would sit at the empty outdoor tables admiring the views, but unaware of the dangers. Thinking of the eight prior cluster bomb casualties in Zawtar East, Ismael was always anxious and would shoo them away.
With the area now almost cleared of danger, the future looks brighter for Ismael and his family.
By mid-May, the MAG team had cleared 37,620 square metres of land in the area and destroyed 11 cluster submunitions. Ismael is thankful for the life-saving work being done: “Civilian lives are at risk, and people need help.”
The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs currently supports the year-long clearance project. This support along, with that of other donors, is crucial to MAG’s clearance of dangerous cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance from Lebanon.
Your donation to MAG helps us to move into current and former conflict zones so that communities who have suffered from remnants of conflict can continue to rebuild their lives and secure their livelihoods.
Images from MAG's programme in Lebanon following the 2006 war which left the south of the country littered with unexploded munitions
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR. Photos: JB Russell / MAG.
Links:
- Why does MAG work in Lebanon?
- MAG Lebanon microsite - find out more about MAG's work in the country
- Donate to MAG online - more than 90 per cent of MAG's income is spent directly on clearance programmes
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5 June 09
