Nahr al Bared Update

Nahr al Bared as seen from the highway outside the camp. The Lebanese army is still keeping journalists and the camp's residents from entering, for their own safety.

Earlier this month, the Lebanese army finally ended the three-month jihadist uprising that killed almost 400 people in a Palestinian camp in north Lebanon. Unfortunately, the Nahr al Bared drama is far from over.

Officials from the United Nations, which runs social services programs in Palestinian refugee camps, said that it would take about six months of clean-up operation before residents could return to Nahr al Bared. It's a dangerous place, littered with land mines, booby traps, and unexploded ordinance -- yesterday three soldiers were wounded and one was killed by explosions. But in the meantime, camp residents are living in schools and makeshift shelters in other -- already overcrowded -- Palestinan camps around Lebanon.

So this week, the Lebanese government asked for almost $400 million from international donors to rebuilt the camp and to care for those displaced by the destruction. The government warned that an incomplete effort would help spread fanaticism and chaos. That may indeed be so, but it's an open question whether the Lebanese government is up to the job of reconstructing the camp. Despite over $7 billion worth of international donations after last summer's war with Israel, that reconstruction program is still lagging.

Meanwhile, at least three of the Fatah al-Islam militant leaders responsible for the carnage at Nahr al Bared are missing, including the group's leader, Shaker Al-Absi. The Lebanese government had originally declared Absi dead, after his wife and several Palestinian clerics identified the body of one of the slain fighters as his. But DNA tests came up negative, and now the search for the mysterious Absi is back on.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut