By Nicholas Blanford
AL-QAA, Lebanon: On a foggy late
afternoon, the border with Syria in the northern Bekaa is a gloomy and ominous
landscape of flat stony fields and mud tracks.
It is marked by an earth berm and a
row of barbed wire. A handful of shepherds, walnut-skinned elderly men wearing
thick wool coats and sporting red and white checkered kuffiyehs, watch over
flocks of fat-tailed sheep. Little else stirs.
In normal times, the Lebanese
customs building on the main road at Al-Qaa, 10 kilometers from the border,
witnesses heavy daily traffic. The Al-Qaa border crossing connects the Bekaa to
Qusayr and Homs, lying eight and 40 kilometers north of the frontier
respectively. But few want to travel to Syria these days and the only vehicles
on the arrow straight road from the customs building are the odd tractor driven
by a local Lebanese farmer and southbound minivans with Syrian plates and roofs
piled with bags and suitcases to a perilous height.
On the other side of the border lie
verdant orange groves which provide cover for Syrians fleeing the violence in
their homeland for the relative safety of Lebanon. Many of those newly arrived
refugees are from Qusayr, which has been under shellfire and plagued by snipers
for several weeks.
“People are thinking if I stay in
Qusayr, I’m going to die, so I have nothing to lose by trying to reach the Lebanese
border,” said Abu Abbas, who fled the besieged town with his family two weeks
ago.
Wearing a brown leather jacket with
a thick gray scarf wrapped around his neck, the hollow-eyed father of three
small children appears still in shock from the experiences he and his family
endured in Qusayr.
“There was no electricity, no water,
no phones. It was too dangerous to walk to the shops to buy bread because of
the snipers,” he said. “We could not sleep at night because we never knew when
a shell would hit our house.”
They crossed the border safely and
hitched a ride to the nearby town of Jdeideh. On reaching a mosque they
encountered a local resident, Ahmad, who on learning they had arrived from
Syria offered to take them into his home.
There are 7,200 Syrian refugees
registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, but the actual
number of Syrians sheltering in Lebanon is judged to be much higher. One
diplomatic source in Beirut, citing multiple assessments by the U.N. and NGOs,
estimated the number at 20,000, double the previously reported figure.
The state-run Higher Relief
Committee and various NGOs have been active mainly in the Akkar area and Wadi
Khaled rather than the Bekaa Valley, where most of the recently arrived
refugees are sheltering. Here they are forced to rely on the hospitality of
Lebanese or move in with relatives.
Jaafar, a 30-year-old Syrian
laborer, his wife and three children arrived in Lebanon two weeks ago having
escaped the then besieged Homs district of Baba Amr. Now, he and his family are
among 30 people living in a tiny one-floor house on the edge of Jdeideh.
Jaafar sat huddled with several
other Syrians in a sparsely furnished front room that was lined with blankets
and bedding donated by a local charity. But they had little else.
“We have 18 blankets but 30 people
in the house. There must have been 20 people from charities and organizations
coming to see us, count how many we are and taking our names. But then they
never come back and we have nothing, no food, no milk for the children,” he
said.
Although they have a roof over their
heads, the accommodation is not free. The house was rented to them for
LL200,000 a month.
“It’s not the end of the month yet
but we don’t have any money. We don’t know how we are going to be able to pay
the rent,” Jaafar said.
He indicated an oil-burning stove in
the center of the room.
“We don’t even have any diesel to
fill the stove and keep us warm at night,” he said.
As if by cue, the electricity cut
out and the room plunged into darkness. After a moment fumbling in the dark,
someone lit a thin candle and placed it on the stove.
“This is the only heat we will have
tonight,” Jaafar joked grimly.
The refugees face an uncertain
future, one that is dependent on developments in Syria. Abu Abbas said there
was no chance of returning to Syria for the foreseeable future. His wife,
Khadija, nodded her head.
“We have run away from death,” she said. “You
think we are in a hurry to run back to death?”
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2012/Mar-16/166848-refugees-in-northern-bekaa-rely-on-local-hospitality-for-survival.ashx#axzz1p511kN7d
