Syrians Struggle in an Uneasy Lebanon

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/world/middleeast/syrians-struggle-in-an-uneasy-lebanon.html

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AL-MINYA, LEBANON — For Mohammed al-Ahmad and his wife Zuhour, this is the second cold, wet winter of the war.

They passed the first in the Bab Amr district of Homs, a onetime rebel stronghold that was taken back by government forces last February, after a long and unrelenting siege. Much of the neighborhood was destroyed. They have no home to go back to.

This winter they are living in a soaked field some kilometers north of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city. The unofficial refugee camp here is home to more than 100. The mud in the narrow paths between tents is ankle-deep at spots and sticks to everything.

Inside Mohammed and Zuhour’s small tent, there is little respite from the harshness of life outside. In one corner, scraps of damp, moldy bread lie in a pile.

The roof, punched with holes, is not waterproof and offered little protection from the rain and sleet of the fierce storms this month. The tent flooded and water soaked their small stock of food.

Two of their five children lie on thin mattresses on the floor, tucked under blankets. They are still and quiet save for the sudden fits of coughing, an increasingly common sound in settlements like this. A third child, awake, has no coat or winter clothing. Zuhour is pregnant: Another child will soon be living in this flimsy shelter.

At the most recent count, there were 212,000 refugees in Lebanon, registered or awaiting registration with the United Nations refugee agency. A year ago, the agency had registered 5,000. The increase mirrors the intensification of a conflict across the border that the United Nations says has now killed 60,000.

In a report released this month, the International Rescue Committee, a crisis relief organization, characterized the situation of the 600,000 Syrian refugees spread across the region as a “deepening humanitarian disaster.” The millions more displaced inside Syria are “in desperate need and have little if any access to humanitarian relief,” it said.

According to the U.N.’s figures, Lebanon has taken in more refugees than any of Syria’s other neighbors. Unlike other countries hosting refugees though, it does not have any official refugee camps.

Camps are a “last resort,” said Ninette Kelley, the most senior representative of the U.N. refugee agency in Lebanon. Still, there is a “need to plan for camps in the event of a mass influx or in the event that local solutions are completely overwhelmed,” she added.

For now, the Lebanese government has no plans for camps, but Wael Abou Faour, the country’s minister of social affairs, conceded that may have to change: “I think that sooner or later we will have to go to camps because we are overstretched,” he said.

In the absence of official camps, unofficial ones are absorbing the rising flood of refugees into the country. Across Lebanon, tents are rigged between buildings, along the edges of highways and in vacant plots and fields.

In some areas close to the border, refugees squat in houses abandoned by the Lebanese who have fled the shelling and gunfire coming from Syria. In small apartments in cities, refugees sleep two to a bed to keep rents affordable. Without guaranteed shelter and with limited aid, many new arrivals say the basic cost of survival is their biggest challenge.

“We are living in a very desperate situation right now,” said Hassan Ali Afeer, 30, a refugee near the Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley town of Arsal. “We are barely living.”

Mr. Afeer’s situation is better than that of many. On a promontory on the edge of Arsal, a local official has donated a plot of land near a mosque where some refugees had been seeking shelter. Islamic charities have pitched in and built concrete huts for 45 families. They are cold, the roofs leak and supplies are scarce: but at least Mr. Afeer and the others living there pay no rent.

In contrast the landowner of the muddy camp in al-Minya charges refugees like Mohammed and Zuhour a monthly rent of $66 for their tent. It is cheaper than renting an apartment, but many struggle to pay even that much in this impoverished part of Lebanon — where work is hard to find for local people, let alone refugees.

Mohammed and Zuhour, like many others, cannot register with the U.N. refugee agency — an inability which limits the aid they can receive.

“We don’t have our family’s papers, we lost them in the shelling,” said 27-year-old Zuhour. “If we could register we would.”

Refugees are dispersed over 700 municipalities in Lebanon, according to the United Nations, and many are in hard-to-reach places, making aid distribution an uphill battle. In a country hindered by its own conflicts, where the government is often seen as unable to provide basic services for its own citizens, refugee support falls mostly on the shoulders of international and local aid organizations.

“Given the size of this country, the amount it has taken on and has had to cope with, given its own political and economic fragility, is truly outstanding,” said Ms. Kelley, the U.N. refugee agency representative.

Proportionally, she noted, the 212,000 refugees counted in Lebanon, which has a population of just four million, would be like having 15 million refugees in the United States. “If you put it in those terms it gives a sense of how weighty it is on this little country that is half the size of Wales,” she said.

A Lebanese delegation this month appealed to the Arab League in Cairo for $180 million from Arab states to help the country cope with the influx.

If the international community is unable to help Lebanon deal with the crisis, “we may see greater calls for dissatisfaction and it could become a situation that would not be as open, as humanitarian as you see today,” Ms. Kelley said.

“The situation is becoming very alarming,” said Mr. Abou Faour, the social affairs minister. “If you look at the Lebanese resources and our financial abilities, it’s becoming very alarming.

“It’s becoming a very huge burden on the Lebanese economy, on the security of Lebanon,” he said.

Beyond the country’s financial and logistic capabilities to handle the refugees, there are other factors at play that complicate the situation.

There is a carefully maintained sectarian balance in Lebanon that some fear could be disrupted by large new refugee communities. The country’s experience with its Palestinian refugee population, segments of which played a major role in Lebanon’s civil war, has made many apprehensive of refugee communities.

“No one is talking about that, but everyone is being concerned about that, that you are having a new balance,” said Mr. Abou Faour.

As of December, 97 percent of registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon were Sunni Muslims, according to U.N. statistics. Most, conscious of the country’s sectarian divide and some fearing a potential outbreak of hostilities here, have opted to live in Sunni-majority areas.

The war in Syria has deepened tensions here, with several outbursts of violence in the past year directly related to the conflict.

There is a danger, as refugees weigh more heavily on Lebanon, that the issue could become politicized and that the refugees could be dragged into Lebanon’s own conflicts.

Gebran Bassil, Lebanon’s energy minister, and son-in-law of the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, Michel Aoun, has called for the borders to be closed to refugees, claiming that extremist elements are among those who have fled from Syria.

Others, meanwhile, including the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, have warned against politicizing the situation and called for the crisis to be treated as a humanitarian issue.

For many refugees though, thoughts are on more immediate matters, like getting enough money to eat and keep roofs over their heads.

Ahmed, 17, who did not want to disclose his last name, has resorted to leaving the camp in al-Minya to beg outside a nearby mosque on Fridays.

Syrian beggars are now a common sight in northern Lebanon and are viewed as an annoyance by many. Ahmed’s begging mostly yields sparse returns as he gets shooed away and cursed by the people he importunes.

“You have no dignity as a Syrian in Lebanon,” he said. “You get treated like this.” He took a drag from an imaginary cigarette, tossed it between puddles and stomped it out with his foot.