On Libya-Tunisia border, refugees plead for help to go home

The flow of refugees pouring into Tunisia to escape the upheavals in Libya slowed for a second day on Thursday, prompting questions about whether Libyan authorities were deliberately trying to stem the tide.

The refugee slowdown came as conditions worsened for thousands of Bangladeshis, already through the gates into Tunisia but trapped in dank open fields of sand without the means to get home.

President Obama on Thursday announced that the US military would send aircraft to transport refugees to their home countries. The European Commission boosted its aid tenfold to deal with the crisis, to 30 million euros (about $42 million).

“We hear reports that a few kilometers from the border, there is a large number of people, but I don't know why the Libyans don’t let them go,” says Tarek Ben Ali, an expert on voluntary returns with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) at the border.

“The urgent need is to help them repatriate, to let them know someone is helping them,” says Mr. Ali.

More than 95,000 have crossed this remote desert border post in the past 10 days, and most have eventually been moved on by military-style fleets of chartered planes – in the case of the majority Egyptians and Chinese – or on ships from Tunisian ports.

The IOM estimates that nearly 200,000 have left Libya so far for Tunisia, Egypt, and Niger.

Aid agencies and local Boy Scouts quick to pitch in

Aid agencies of all kinds have been quick to pitch in, and Tunisians have by all accounts been generous with donations and with their time. Boy Scouts and other volunteers handed out bread and water from the backs of trucks on Thursday, as they have done from the start.

“We wanted to buy food, but what’s happening is that people show up at the border with food. We haven’t had to buy any,” says Moadh Kheriji, a UK-based official with the Islamic Relief charity, which provides 5,000 food packages and 5,000 personal hygiene kits each day to streaming refugees.

Tunisians in even some of the poorest parts of the country have taken up collections and sent convoys with donated supplies, he says, to “help their Libyan brothers and their Egyptian brothers” after watching the plight of the refugees on television.

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