Leila
Molana-Allen:
On the 14th March
2011, Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley was a very different
place. Saadnayel was all fruit trees and rolling
green fields then; not the white U.N. tents now such a
distinguishing feature of the horizon. Maria Assi,
whose charity Beyond rushed to help, was here as dozens, then hundreds, then
thousands of women and children began to tumble over the high mountains that
mark Lebanon’s border with Syria. Residents welcomed them, giving them
temporary shelter in homes, schools, mosques, even half-finished construction
sites.
Tell me about those
early first few days?
Maria
Assi:
You know for us it was
like, maybe one month ,maybe two months, maybe three.
What we thought the maximum may be, like,
50,000, something like that. It wasn't, like, clear
that they will stay for 10 years.
Leila
Molana-Allen:
But as Syria’s protests
and the resulting government crackdown raged on, morphing into a bloody civil
war, stay they did. And many more would come.
Umm Omar’s family was
one of the first to arrive.
Umm
Omar:
When we came here we rented a house from the locals and we stayed with
them. We thought we’d be here for a day or two, a week
or two, a month, and then we’d go back.
Leila
Molana-Allen:
Hoping to limit the
refugee presence here, Lebanon’s government never allowed formal camps to be
built. Despite having lived in them for years, refugees who live in tents aren’t allowed to build anything permanent.
In 2019, the government
decided tents breaking the rules must be torn down, and
started with the border town of Arsal.
Umm
Omar: We saw the army coming
with its trucks, it demolished our neighbor’s house. We were afraid so we
emptied out of our house and let them do whatever they want.
Leila
Molana-Allen:
So all this she’s telling me this used to be a stone wall up to the
top and they were forced to knock it all the way down. Now all of this is just
wood and tarpaulin. It’s plastic and she says it’s
very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer.
The Lebanese government
wants the refugees to go back to Syria, and thousands have. But NGOs have
serious concerns over the conditions they’ll find
there. Some return to find they no longer have houses, their former villages
decimated. Others report arbitrary arrests by the state, or
forced military conscription.
After their tents were
knocked down, some here decided to go back; but Umm Omar had already tried that
a few years before after things became too tough in Lebanon. She went back to
Qamishli with her daughters for two years, but it was even tougher there. There
was no work, and her husband couldn’t go back with
them because he feared being forced into the army. Eventually they snuck back
into Lebanon via a smuggling route.
Despite the instability
they face, Syrians have become a part of these communities. They live here, and
they die here too. This small, unofficial graveyard in the tribal village of Faour holds the bodies of some 1,000 Syrians. Many of the
graves here, paid for by the local Lebanese residents, are just a couple of
feet long, holding the bodies of children who died of cold and lack of food in
those early, chaotic days of the exodus.
The UN estimates that
more than 6.5 million Syrians have fled the country since the conflict began.
More than a million came here to Lebanon, and no one knows exactly how many are
still here. Many of them have been living here for nearly a decade, but with
little chance they’ll get more rights or citizenship,
they face a choice between the dangerous journey back home, or staying here,
living in limbo.
We’re just two miles from the border, but for the Syrians buried here,
this is the closest they’ll ever get to going home.
No one has an exact
figure because in 2015, the Lebanese government told the UN to stop registering
refugees. At that point there were 1.2 million but the
government feared if the number went any higher it would spark public uproar
and create a volatile political situation in a country of only 4 million
Lebanese.
The UN struck a deal;
they would stop registering refugees, but could still
give them services. But life without that vital document is difficult. They
don’t have the right to be here, and can’t apply for
it. Every time they go out, they risk being stopped at one of Lebanon’s many
checkpoints and arrested. And until recently, it was almost impossible to apply
for asylum in another country without being registered.
They kept coming anyway.
While there are now 865,000 registered still living in Lebanon, the government
estimates the real number is 1.5 million.
And even those who are
registered are struggling. In every settlement we went to we met refugees
who told us their UN benefits had recently been cut.
This is Mounira’s family’s registration certificate. They
registered seven years ago, and they were getting help. It registers her, her
husband and her four sons, but she says that help stopped.
Mounira:
We don’t even have enough for food. The
UN no longer gives us food, how are we going to live? There’s
no allowance, the tent costs money, the generator does, electricity
does, everything does.
Leila
Molana-Allen:
The UN says it simply
cannot afford to support the vast number of people living here.
Lisa Abou Khaled:
We currently are only
able to reach about 52% with food and monthly cash assistance. We assess
whether there are now other refugees who are more in need, which is very difficult to explain to refugees, and we understand the
frustration.
Leila
Molana-Allen:
The problem is, as
Lebanon’s economy continues its slow-motion collapse,
and food prices have tripled, nearly all refugees living in Lebanon are now in
desperate need. 90% now live in extreme poverty. The vast majority of refugees I’ve met over the years say
Lebanese civilians have been welcoming and generous to them. But with more than
half Lebanon’s own population now living in poverty too, they fear that
generosity may be reaching its limit.
As tensions between
Syrian refugees and their Lebanese hosts escalate, their fragile way of life
here is in danger. More than 300 refugees used to live in this small camp on
the highway near Tripoli. After dark one night last
December they suddenly heard gunfire. Within minutes, the entire camp was in
flames, set alight by angry locals after a fight with Syrians from the camp.
The families fled with
what they could carry. They lived, but lost everything
else. Now all that’s left are the scattered, charred
remains of daily life; an apron and pieces of a glass jar here; a baby’s bib
there.
The refugees here were
mostly from the same area and had created a semblance of home. Now that
community is shattered, its residents scattered. Raed
and his wife and children now rent a sparse room nearby.
Raed al Abed:
The children are in such
terror that at night they don’t sleep. In Syria where there’s so much war and yet we weren’t as terrified as that.
When the camp was burnt our whole future was destroyed.
Leila
Molana-Allen:
This was Raed’s home. This was their bathroom, their kitchen, their
bedroom. And it’s small, but they were happy here, he
says.
Just as they lost their
homes, they were also losing their livelihoods. As day labour
dries up because of the economic crisis and COVID-19 restrictions, they’re earning next to nothing. Syrian refugees live on
about 300,000 lira per month on average now, half the minimum wage and now
worth less than $30. The refugees here told us they’re
surviving on little more than potatoes.
The refugee crisis once
dominated international headlines, but the longer they’ve
been here and the more intractable the conflict has become, the less attention
they’ve received. The UN says the situation is so bad they’ve
seen a huge increase in calls from refugees contemplating suicide.
Lisa Abou Khaled:
I think people think
that refugees are the most vulnerable when they first flee their country. The
vast majority were not prepared to live years, you know, a
number of years in exile. And now they feel like they're
stuck. So, not just their resources are being depleted, but their resilience is
depleted.
Leila
Molana-Allen:
All the refugees we
spoke to said they felt trapped and hopeless. Their situation is more
precarious now than it has ever been.
Umm
Omar:
There’s no safety at the moment, even
for the Lebanese there’s no security, so what is it like for us living in a
country that isn’t our own?
Leila
Molana-Allen:
Umm Omar can see Syria
from the small plastic window of the makeshift tent she had to rebuild with her
bare hands. But it’s not home anymore. And neither is
here. As far as she’s concerned, she no longer has
one.
###
|
TIMECODE |
LOWER
THIRD |
1 |
0:39 |
MARIA ASSI CEO, BEYOND ASSOCIATION |
2 |
1:10 |
UMM OMAR SYRIAN REFUGEE |
3 |
3:10 |
FAOUR, LEBANON LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT |
4 |
4:57 |
MOUNIRA SYRIAN REFUGEE |
5 |
5:09 |
LISA ABOU KHALED U.N. HIGH COMMISSION ON REFUGEES |
6 |
6:42 |
RAED AL ABED SYRIAN REFUGEE |