Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

A State Department report about talking with Egyptian refugees fleeing Libya

A friend passes along this interesting State Department email, filed over the weekend from Djerba, in southern Tunisia. It is fine, except I wish the writer had said "pro-Qaddafi" forces stedda "pro-Libya" : Spent a few minutes chatting with the Egyptians in the camp outside the airport and also on board the aircraft in order ...

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557017_ricks1_1913.jpg

A friend passes along this interesting State Department email, filed over the weekend from Djerba, in southern Tunisia. It is fine, except I wish the writer had said "pro-Qaddafi" forces stedda "pro-Libya" :

A friend passes along this interesting State Department email, filed over the weekend from Djerba, in southern Tunisia. It is fine, except I wish the writer had said "pro-Qaddafi" forces stedda "pro-Libya" :

Spent a few minutes chatting with the Egyptians in the camp outside the airport and also on board the aircraft in order to answer any questions the refugees may have and to put an American face on the mission as there were no Arabic speaking crew on board. A few points the Egyptians brought up:

All Egyptians felt very well taken care of. They said they had all the food, all the water and all the medicine they needed. They were very thankful to the Tunisian people and the Tunisian government and said they felt very welcome and had been handled with kindness. Egyptians can be seen walking around the airport with Tunisian Flags pinned to their suitcases or clothing. On Friday night, we witnessed a dueling cheerleading match where one group of approximately 200 Egyptians in a cordoned off block in the terminal started shouting cheers to Tunis and waving a single Tunisian flag. A second cordon of Egyptians one-upped the first by singing, waving dozens of Tunisian flags in a spinning dancing circle while they hoisted a Tunisian man in the center of the mass on their shoulders. That’s probably my first Egyptian Tunisian Pep Rally.

The Egyptians were well aware of international support. All Egyptians noted and were thankful for predominant and overwhelming western humanitarian transportation support and specifically named the Spanish, Italian, British and French governments. Only a few (despite the fact that they were on an American aircraft) mentioned the American government humanitarian support. Apparently, American involvement has not filtered down to this batch of refugees. A few asked if America was going to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and hoped that we would.

For one group, humanitarian support (or perceived lack thereof) of the Arabs nations was a point of anger.

They felt only the West was chartering flights for them and that the Arab states had not come to their aid (I can’t confirm the factuality of that statement, but if this is not true, then the Arab states are not doing a great job publicizing their aid). Another group mentioned that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar had provided them with food in the camp.

All Egyptians appeared in good spirits, were happy to be going to home to their "new Egypt" and were calm and understanding of the difficulty involved with getting them home. Two groups were very insistent on telling me their trials and tribulations of coming across the border. All had left 6-7 days ago from various parts of Libya by car or buses. When confronted by Pro-Libya forces, they were accused of being members of the "Egyptian Mafia", all money was taken from them, cameras were taken and smashed, and cell phones were either destroyed or their simcards were taken from them.

All refugees I talked to fled their corner of Libya 6-7 days ago. They had spent 3 days on the run in Libya, one 1 day on the border, 1 day in the camp, and 2 days at the airport before being flown home.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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