Refugee Camp

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya is the biggest in the world, a sprawl of nearly half a million people, some of whom have lived there for about two decades. Residents who fled famine and warfare in Somalia have now seen grandchildren born and raised in what was supposed to have been a temporary home. They have also seen predators and criminal groups flourish, and watched as recruiters lure bored and frustrated boys back to Somalia to serve in militias or pirate gangs.

Prospects for a cease-fire in Syria further dimmed Monday when fighting spilled over the border into Turkey and Lebanon, leaving at least three people dead, opposition activists said. An additional 160 people were killed within Syria, activists said, as forces loyal to embattled President Bashar Assad continued to shell buildings and shoot at residents of rebellious cities on the eve of a proposed halt to the hostilities. Government troops and tanks were due to be withdrawn Tuesday from cities and towns, but that seemed increasingly unlikely as the violence has only escalated in the last week and on Sunday the Assad government demanded written guarantees from all opposition groups, a proposal that the rebel Free Syrian Army dismissed.

Millions of people watched runner Lopez Lomong carry the American flag and lead the United States delegation into the opening ceremony at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, marveling at the Sudanese refugee who survived unspeakable horrors before an American foster family took him in and gave him a new life. Few people will see him repeat his flag-bearer role Friday in a different setting, but the occasion will be just as meaningful. Lomong will be the standard bearer for Northern Arizona University's school of business at graduation ceremonies in Flagstaff, an honor bestowed by faculty members.

The barefoot Somali boy sat by an irrigation canal just beyond the camp that was his world, staring into the dirty, stagnant water. Why was his life so wretched? That day, Maulid Warfa had seen a school in a nearby town with real desks and chairs. The contrast with his refugee camp school, a bare hut with a leaking roof, seemed unbearable. "I remember sitting, thinking, 'Why? Why am I going to this school that doesn't even have chairs and doesn't even have a proper roof?

Owliya Dima scanned the bare apartment, noting the only new items the family owned: six white pillows stacked on two box springs that were missing their mattresses. In the living room were three mismatched sofas donated by a church. One of the few items in the kitchen was an old skillet that the refugee family had brought from Iraq. The father, Hussam Zabiba, held up a handful of miniature shampoo and soap bottles for Dima to see. "Hotel," he explained. Dima, an Ethiopian Muslim who had been a refugee herself nearly three decades ago, moved through the two-bedroom Anaheim apartment with an Arabic interpreter, compiling a list of needed items.

Syrian authorities preparing for a United Nations inspection are covering up damage in a Palestinian refugee camp that was pummeled with gunfire and rockets during a crackdown on protesters in recent days, according to a Western diplomat, Syrian activists and camp residents. The Syrian army and security forces launched a naval and ground attack on the coastal city of Latakia on Aug. 13. During the operation they shelled the Ramel refugee camp, which houses more than 10,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants as well as impoverished Syrians.

The people mass outside the gates hundreds deep and eerily still, many squatting in the red dirt holding emaciated children. They wait for water and medicine. But most of all, they wait for an open spot at the world's largest refugee complex. The worst drought in decades has blistered large parts of the Horn of Africa, turning it into a hellscape of deserted villages and dead rivers. The United Nations says 12 million people need emergency aid. Those hardest to reach are in Somalia, where a quarter of the country's 7.5 million people are on the move.

Funerals in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp near the Syrian capital of Damascus turned violent late Monday as clashes erupted between camp residents and a Syrian-backed Palestinian faction, leading to the deaths of as many as 20 people, according to Palestinian sources and amateur video posted on the Internet. Tension rose during a funeral procession when mourners in the camp denounced the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command, alleging that the faction had persuaded the mourners' relatives to participate in Sunday's deadly demonstrations near the Syrian-Israeli border, said an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian news outlets.

Filmmaker Daron Ker's earliest childhood remembrances come from the three torturous years he spent in a malaria-ridden concentration camp in the center of Cambodia's killing fields. His next, more pleasant memories are of watching movies projected on a tattered bedsheet in a refugee camp just across the Thai border. "The one film that I really loved was 'Spartacus,'" Ker says enthusiastically. "It's weird, because I didn't understand anything. But it was the most powerful thing I had ever seen.

Between Shades of Gray A Novel Ruta Sepetys Philomel: 344 pp., $17.99, ages 12 and up In young adult books about World War II, the Holocaust dominates. But there are lesser-known atrocities that also took place, including during the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states. The Soviets not only displaced countless Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, leaving them to die, but wiped those countries from the map for much of the last century. It's this story that is told in "Between Shades of Gray," the heart-wrenching debut novel from Ruta Sepetys.