A journey through the country with the highest intake of refugees in the world (accounting for around 30%-40% of the population), that is trying to turn over a new leaf after two years of political vacuum
A foul-smelling air hangs over Lebanon, arriving from Syria. It can be smelt in the thousands of improvised refugee camps that have randomly popped up all over the place in cities – in building sites, garages and derelict shopping centres –, in the countryside, in the Beqaa Valley, on the border, in the centre of Beirut. But above all it is seen in the terrified faces of the over 1,5 million displaced people (UNHCR figures, NGOs say there are 2 million), in a population of 4 million. “My little boy stopped sleeping,” says 35-year-old Dalal pointing at the cramped hovel built by her husband, where she, her husband, four children and brother have been living for the past 3 years. “He would wake up when he heard the bombs and before we left, the sound of anything made him jump. He’s much better now,” she said, pointing at the 7-year-old child who was doing his homework on a mattress.
The poor dwelling of the Alnaboulsi family overlooks the main open space of the Dekwaneh refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, that hosts about 70 people (most of them children) who have fled Dar’a, the final stretch of land in southern Syria before Jordan, where the disaster began back in 2011. They come from rural areas and are mostly farmers-turned-builders. The camp is located within a building site and looks like the Middle Eastern version of a Romani camp: rubbish strewn all over the place, debris, puddles, no toilet facilities or drainage system. “There are no official UNHCR camps present in Lebanon,” says one volunteer from the John XXIII Association who lives in the Akkar refugee camp in northern Lebanon. “People occupy whatever space is available, build a shack, use tents or rent apartments at increasingly high prices (in Beirut rent is $250 per month for two rooms and a kitchen, Ed.), then UNHCR turns up to register them as refugees and places them under its own jurisdiction”. But the refugee status offered by the UN is merely symbolic and only guarantees some services in addition to the possibility of requesting resettlement in a third-party country. Indeed, Lebanon, which is not among the signatories of the Geneva asylum Convention, does not guarantee anyone refugee status and leaves hundreds of thousands of refugees in illegality limbo.
Numerous children inhabit this world of escape, nightmares and fear. In recent years, the number of minors in the world who are forced to migrate has increased exponentially. In 2015, more than half (51%) of the 65 million displaced people were minors, many of them unaccompanied. In the refugee camps in Lebanon you see them walking around barefoot, disoriented and sad. “I hate Syria!” screams a little boy aged eight. He has just arrived in Beirut from western Aleppo with his mother, father and two sisters. “All there is, is war and war doesn’t let you live.” “It was a very tough decision to have to make,” his father said seconding his son. The father, who is a distinguished gentleman who belongs to Aleppo’s Christian community, prefers to remain anonymous. “We had everything, a great job, my children went to school, the eldest had started university, we waited until the last minute to take this decision, in the end fear got the better of us, especially in the children.” They travelled to the border by car with the headlamps off, having forked out a huge sum of money, and stepped into the dark, into the world of the unknown.
Janine Jalekh, a Lebanese journalist who writes for L’Orient-le Jour says: “To some extent we can understand what these refugees are going through as we were at war for many years and had to endure bombs and attacks , so I think this is partly why we are able to host such a large number of fugitives. Naturally, as Arsal (a small centre in the north, where on top of refugees, there are rebels on the run and dormant ISIS cells which, back in 2014, drove the Lebanese army to launch an armed intervention, Ed.) has demonstrated, the risks are many and it cannot be denied that the Syrian crisis has exacerbated the critical situation in an unstable country.”
In the hope of finally moving towards stability after a political vacuum that has lasted more than two years and a lack of government, at the start of November, Lebanese parties signed an historic agreement that led to the nomination of the president and prime minister, General Aoun and the Sunni Saad al-Hariri, respectively.
Yesterday evening (18 December), Hariri himself announced the formation of a new government of “national unity”, which will need to obtain Parliament’s confidence, a vote which should not hold any surprises in store. Hariri, Rafiq’s son and political heir, had to go for a compromise and the 30-minister “formula”, with ministers equally split between the Muslim and Christian communities.
President Aoun is backed by Hezbollah, a movement which the speaker, Berri, is close to. Berri, however, detests the Maronite Christian leader and has done everything in his power to prevent his nomination. The choice of Hariri as prime minister creates doubts as comes from President Aoun, who, as previously mentioned, is backed by Hezbollah, the group allegedly responsible for the murder of Rafiq Hariri (and 22 other people) on 14 February 2005, when he held the position now taken over by his son.
Two other important pawns on the complex Lebanese chessboard, are Samir Geagea, a former militant of Maronite Christian faith, president of the Lebanese Forces party and Aoun’s historic rival and former Minister of Justice, Ashraf Rifi, who is loyal to Hariri. Surprisingly, the former expressed himself in favour of Aoun being elected, while the latter dissociated himself from his mentor and opposed the presidential nomination. To complete the picture (which is actually far more complex), we can mention the case of Najib Miqati, a member of the coalition led by Hezbollah and Aoun, which continues to declare his opposition to the president’s mandate.”
This opposition cross-over has slowed the formation of a government and risk majorly hindering the new path Lebanon wants to set itself on.
“This is our strength on the one hand,” confesses Ibrahim Shamseddine, former development Minister and President of the Association for Charity and Culture. “On the other hand, it is a massive weakness. As John Paul II said, Lebanon is a message more than a country. It can be a message of co-existence but only if it interprets the Constitution in the most open way possible. The risk is that Lebanon will end up with a Maronite president for the Maronites, a Sunni prime minister for the Sunnis, a Shiite speaker just for the Shiites and so and so forth for the Druzes and other minorities. This is not co-existence, it is denial of it.”
