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Syrians Abroad Vote in Advance of National Ballot Syrians in Lebanon Flood Polling Place, Choosing Assad Out of Fervor or Fear
(about 11 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Thousands of Syrians clogged approach roads and formed lines outside their embassy here on Wednesday as voting for expatriates began in an election that is expected to return President Bashar al-Assad to power. YARZE, Lebanon — Syrians living in Lebanon swarmed their country’s embassy here on Wednesday to cast early ballots in a sharply disputed presidential election that is virtually sure to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power, turning out in numbers that surprised even embassy officials and brought a major highway from Beirut to a standstill for much of the day.
Mr. Assad has faced down an insurgency that began with political protests three years ago and exploded into civil war as the government cracked down and opponents took up arms. The election inside Syria is to be held next Tuesday, with two lesser-known candidates formally opposing Mr. Assad. Not a single person among the scores interviewed said they had voted for anyone other than Mr. Assad, who for the first time in four decades of his family’s rule faces opponents, two little-known figures.
Scores of Syrians at the embassy on Wednesday told a reporter that they planned to vote for Mr. Assad. None of those interviewed said they would vote for his nominal opponents. Of those interviewed, only a few said they had come as war refugees; many had long worked in Lebanon or were studying here. Some voters proclaimed enthusiastic support for Mr. Assad. Others said they felt obliged to vote for fear that they would otherwise be barred from returning home or could face retribution from Mr. Assad’s powerful supporters in Lebanon. Other Syrians around Beirut said they stayed away because they considered the election an insulting sham.
Refugees face hurdles if they want to vote, including a requirement that they must have entered Lebanon through an official border post. That ruled out hundreds of thousands who crossed the porous border anywhere they could or avoided official crossings because they feared the authorities. Mr. Assad has held out against an insurgency that began with protests three years ago before exploding into civil war. His opponents reject the very notion of an election run by a government with no history of tolerating dissent during a conflict that has killed an estimated 160,000 Syrians and driven more than nine million from their homes, with 2.5 million of them refugees outside the country.
Some Syrians living in refugee camps in Lebanon said that embassy officials had visited them earlier and told them that they had to vote if they ever wanted to return home. But embassy officials said the refugees were referring to a voter registration program. With voting in Syria scheduled for next Tuesday, elections for Syrians living abroad were held on Wednesday at 43 embassies around the globe, though several countries, including France, refused to allow them. The voting served as a kind of dress rehearsal and an important inflection point in the conflict.
The Syrian Embassy lies on a narrow street in the suburb of Baabda shaded by eucalyptus trees, near a monument to Lebanon’s own 15-year civil war, which started in 1975 and tore much of Beirut and other cities apart. Mr. Assad’s supporters said the vote gave him new legitimacy and showed that many supported him freely, even as scenes at some polls sharpened questions about the credibility of the process, with no private booths, votes cast by some under-age Syrians and apparently lax control over who received ballots.
Lebanese security forces blocked off a street, setting up metal detectors and channeling voters through lanes of plastic tape. The Lebanese authorities sent in reinforcements as the crowds swelled to unexpectedly large numbers. People who went there to vote said some people were injured in the pushing and shoving and some were beaten by troops. Opponents, who staged protests in some cities, conceded that they never expected him to survive in office long enough to claim a new seven-year term. Some said that Syrians, exhausted by war and fearful that the alternative could be Islamist extremists, might be voting for him because they believe he is winning — and is the lesser of two evils.
Inside the embassy, officials checked the identities of some of the 100,000 Syrians registered to vote and handed out ballot papers with photographs of the three candidates. Nowhere was the day more dramatic than in Lebanon, a country of four million people that hosts more than one million officially registered refugees, more than any other country. Lebanese officials say the country also hosts as many as 500,000 to one million more Syrians, including expatriates, laborers and refugees who fear registering.
United Nations officials in Geneva have said that the civil war has driven nearly three million refugees out of Syria, with the numbers increasing by 100,000 each month. The number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon is estimated at around a million. Syria long occupied neighboring Lebanon and still wields strong influence here, through its ally Hezbollah, the Shiite militia that is also the country’s most powerful political party and has sent fighters to support the Syrian government.
Mr. Assad is seeking a third seven-year term after taking over from his father, Hafez, in 2000. Neither of his little-known opponents, Hassan el-Nuri and Maher al-Najjar, is considered to have any chance of winning. The United States and the Syrian opposition have dismissed the election as a sham which, analysts said, is apparently intended to impart a sense of legitimacy to a government that tolerated no real dissent before the uprising and has cracked down unrelentingly on its opponents since the first stirrings of revolt in March 2011. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were excluded by rules that required voters to have left Syria through official customs posts. Many refugees crossed porous mountain borders to take the quickest and safest route or because they feared the authorities.
One voter, who declined to be identified by name for fear of reprisals, said he had been forced to vote but corrected himself to say it was his “national duty.” Others refused to vote. In Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in south Beirut that hosts thousands of Syrians, Ahmed, 34, a carpenter from the northeastern Syrian city of Raqqa who asked not to be fully identified for his safety, said he would never vote for the man “who made me a humiliated refugee.”
Others, though, seemed jubilant, wearing T-shirts bearing the president’s image and waving Syrian flags. “My blood type is Bashar,” said Ahmed al-Ali, a restaurant worker from the beleaguered northern Syrian city of Aleppo, who marked the ballot in his own blood and then dabbed his face with it. There was no sign of opposition supporters, many of whom have indicated that they would stay home rather than attempt to vote. But nearby, Umm Mohammad, 50, who is from Aleppo, said she had taken a bus provided by Hezbollah to vote. “I hate Bashar, but we are just weak strangers here,” she said, adding that her son had been beaten when a pro-Assad militia member saw the opposition flag in their apartment.
Inside the polling area on Wednesday, there were no closed voting booths and some voters asked poll workers — both pro-government volunteers and personnel from the embassy — to help them fill out the ballot paper. Others displayed enthusiasm that seemed hard to fake. Souad Abu Hilal, a beautician, wore a T-shirt proclaiming “shabiha forever,” referring to pro-government militias loathed by the opposition, and declared: “Every country has mistakes. Bashar is going to fix all of our mistakes.”
Abu Mohammad, 25, who described himself as a businessman, said: “I’m a reasonable guy, an intellectual. Bashar is a doctor, he’s smart, he’s peaceful.” Regardless, the road to the embassy became the scene of the largest gathering of Syrians here in memory, as tens of thousands, and perhaps more, tried to vote.
Souad Abu Hilal, 25, a beautician, told a reporter: “I eat bread Bashar brings to Syria. Every country has mistakes, Bashar is going to fix all our mistakes.” The Lebanese authorities recently banned Syrian political displays to prevent conflict, but along the clogged highway, watched by Lebanese security forces, men hung out of cars festooned with portraits of Mr. Assad and the flags of the Syrian government and Hezbollah. Nowhere to be seen were pictures of the other candidates, let alone the flag of the Syrian opposition.
She wore a homemade T-shirt proclaiming: “Shabiha forever,” a reference to the pro-government gangs operating in Syria against perceived opponents of Mr. Assad. Shoving crowds at the embassy — occasionally chanting “With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice for you, O Bashar!” — overwhelmed a single small room with just four ballot boxes. Officials extended voting hours until midnight, but said they were unsure whether they could accommodate even the 100,000 who had preregistered.
“The good days are gone,” said Abu Hatem, 34, a plumber, adding that he had “of course” voted for Mr. Assad. “Only he can bring Syria back to its proud days,” he said. Officials took down names and identity numbers. Under portraits of Mr. Assad and his nominal opponents, Hassan al-Nuri and Maher al-Hajjar, volunteers handed out ballots — even to foreign reporters — without demanding proof of registration.
Elsewhere in the region, the expatriates seemed less enthusiastic. Ahmed al-Ali, 16, a restaurant worker from Aleppo, marked the ballot in his own blood and then dabbed his face with it, declaring, “My blood type is Bashar.” The voting age is 18.
In Amman, Jordan, The Associated Press reported, dozens gathered outside the Syrian Embassy to protest the voting. One placard read: “Anyone who votes has no morals.” But Lima Darazini, a pro-government voter from Aleppo, said she voted for Mr. Assad “because we used to live in safety during his rule, and because we love him,” The A.P. said. Amid confusion over the process, many voters, some illiterate, asked election workers to fill out their ballots, wrote their names on them, or failed to seal their envelopes.
In downtown Beirut, middle-class government opponents said they had the luxury of not voting because they had secure livelihoods outside Syria. One woman said her husband, who commutes to Damascus, planned to vote to avoid trouble and because he thought that Mr. Assad could best end the chaos. But she said she would not vote, “no matter what,” for someone “who destroyed the country to stay in power.”