”This catastrophe will bring the country together”. Because that’s what the Libyan population wants, ”it wants a united country” that can respect what has ”always been a mixed social fabric” and that has had enough of ”a division that is not between the people of ‘west and east, but between Dbeibah and Haftar”. Thus, from a Derna devastated by Hurricane Daniel, Cesvi’s representative for Libya, Ahmed Kashbur, explains to Adnkronos ”what people say and hope for, our staff and the people we met”. While the dead are mourned and ”we fear the spread of diseases from the corpses” that resurface from the waters, Kashbur sees in the ”tragedy a reason to reunite the two parts of the country”. Just today, says he who has a mother from Misurata and a father from Benghazi, ”the news is circulating of a possible reunification of the Tripoli air force with that of Benghazi”.
While waiting for formal steps to be taken in this direction, what is already happening in the field is ”collaboration between the west and east of the country in this tragedy”. And ”not just the first day, when” the prime minister of the government of national unity Abdul Hamid Mohammed ”Dbeibah sent rescue teams, doctors, ambulances, technicians to fix electricity and water lines”. The Tripoli militias arrived in Derna ”on the second day to bring aid”, but there was also a mobilization ”at community and population level. Humanitarian aid also arrived from Misurata and other cities. We have seen many loads of aid with the names of western cities”.
But it’s not just about material goods. In Derna and the surrounding area, says Kashbur, ”many young volunteers have arrived from the West to lend a hand in distributing aid to the population or searching for the missing”. In short, ”everyone united in the face of this catastrophe”.
‘lots of help and poor coordination, great pain for entire families who died’
All of Libya united in helping, in addition to the international community: ”aid comes from all over the world, from Italy to Spain, from France to Turkey, and there is no shortage of it, we have it in abundance and we no longer know where to put it – explains Kashbur – However, the organizational part for the coordination of aid and its distribution is a little confusing. In Libya there is no structure like the Civil Protection in Italy”. And so, he explains, this role has been taken over by ”the Red Crescent and the international Red Cross which deal with access to essential goods, the distribution of food, blankets and clothing”.
However, the situation remains ”disastrous from all points of view” explains Kashbur, ”even on a psychological level, because entire families have died, entire tribes have died”. And when he talks about family, the Cesvi representative talks about ”a family of 75 people, all living in the same building that was swept away” by the waters of the dam that broke, ”23 million liters of water hit the city, the historic center” of Derna and ”a river that was 40 meters wide became a kilometer wide”. It is ”a very great pain”, says Kashbur, which like Cesvi ”we are trying to address by providing psycho-social support”.
Cesvi staff, he explains, are working in Derna ”to identify the needs of the population. We are working to try to satisfy the needs for drinking water and hygiene kits”. Furthermore ”we are organizing ourselves to open a social center for re-education, for informal education, without report cards or certificates”, but still useful for ”not stopping access to education. We had already done it during the 2014 war when the schools were closed”.
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