BEIRUT: In a bustling district of the Lebanese capital, a government inspector issues a fine to the manager of a popular restaurant for hiring 17 Syrian refugees without work permits.
In a country brimming with foreign workers, the labor ministry is clamping down on businesses employing foreigners without the required papers.
But activists have condemned the crackdown, saying it is a pretext to pressure Syrian refugees to return to their war-torn homeland.
After a long argument with the inspectors, restaurant manager Younes Younes reluctantly accepts the $3,300 fine.
“I can’t just replace the Syrian guy who’s been preparing my shawarma sandwiches here for years,” he said.
“Finding Lebanese employees is not easy because they ask for higher salaries,” he told AFP.
“We’ve looked for Lebanese to hire... but we haven’t found anyone.”
On a nearby restaurant window in the Hamra neighborhood, a sign reads: “Lebanese employees wanted.”
“None available,” someone has scribbled over it in red.
Lebanon, a small country of just four million people, says it hosts 1.5 million Syrians — just under 1 million of them registered refugees — as well as other foreign workers.
Across the country, Egyptians fill up cars at petrol stations, Filipinos and Ethiopians clean homes, and Syrians work in restaurants or in the fields.
Due to poor state oversight, employers in Lebanon often hire foreign workers without employment permits, complaining that the process of acquiring one is long and complicated.
Not registering a worker also avoids having to pay social security.
The labor ministry says it is now looking to change this.
It has erected controversial billboards across the country in recent weeks, urging employers to hire citizens.
Last month, it gave business owners a one-month deadline to settle the paperwork of their foreign staff, and has started to address violations in recent weeks.
But experts and analysts question the motives behind the latest measures.
“There’s a clear strategy to exert increasing pressure on Syrians” to go back, said Nasser Yassin of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs.
Layla, a 20 year-old Syrian hairdresser, said she was forced to leave her job at a Beirut salon along with four Syrian colleagues because they did not have work permits.
“They gave us 48 hours’ notice,” she said.
She too believes that the government’s latest measures are meant to persuade Syrians to return home, but said that this is not likely to happen.
Instead, refugees will likely seek other illegal forms of employment to make a living, she added.
Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups have accused the Lebanese government of using various methods to put “illegitimate pressure” on Syrian refugees to go home.
“They include ramped up arrests and deportations, closing of shops and confiscation or destruction of unlicensed vehicles,” HRW said.
They came “on top of other longstanding restrictions, including curfews and evictions, and barriers to refugee education, legal residency and work authorization,” the group said.
Earlier this year, Lebanese authorities gave Syrians living in the eastern region of Arsal until July 1 to demolish shelters made of anything but timber and plastic sheeting.
There has been mounting political pressure for the Syrians to be sent home, with some politicians blaming them for the country’s economic woes.
For more than a year, Beirut has been organizing “voluntary” returns.
Last month, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil called on employers to give priority to Lebanese over foreign labor, including Syrians.
His statement drew criticism from activists who accused him of hate speech, but many in Lebanon have defended the minister.
“We now wish we were refugees in Lebanon,” said Nohad, a 50-year-old housewife.
“Syrians are receiving monthly assistance, free education and health care that Lebanese don’t get,” she told AFP.
Marlene Attallah, a labor ministry official, said the latest measures were designed to protect Lebanese jobs.
“There are thousands of Lebanese looking for job opportunities,” she said during an inspection tour.
“The campaign concerns all undocumented foreign workers, and not one particular nationality.”
Yassin, the researcher, acknowledged the “tremendous pressure” Syrian refugees place on the country, but also stressed contribution they made to the economy by renting houses and shops.
The latest measures are unlikely to encourage Syrians to go home, he said.
Instead, “they will probably become poorer, and turn into groups constantly on the run.”
Lebanon ups pressure on Syrian refugees to return
Lebanon ups pressure on Syrian refugees to return
- Experts and analysts question the motives behind the latest measures
- “We now wish we were refugees in Lebanon”
King Charles donates to International Rescue Committee’s Syria aid operation
- Donation will fund healthcare, protect children, provide emergency cash
LONDON: King Charles III has helped pay for urgent humanitarian aid needed in Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad.
Charles made an undisclosed donation to International Rescue Committee UK to fund healthcare, protect children and provide emergency cash.
The king is the patron of the charity, which says Syria is facing profound humanitarian needs despite the defeat of the Assad regime by opposition forces.
Khusbu Patel, IRC UK’s acting executive director, said: “His Majesty’s contribution underscores his deep commitment to addressing urgent global challenges, and helping people affected by humanitarian crises to survive, recover and rebuild their lives.
“We are immensely grateful to His Majesty The King for his donation supporting our work in Syria. This assistance will enable us to provide essential services, including healthcare, child protection and emergency cash, to those people most in need.”
The charity said it was scaling-up its efforts in northern Syria to evaluate the urgent needs of communities. Towns and villages have become accessible to aid groups for the first time in years now that rebel forces have taken control of much of the country.
The charity said Syria ranks fourth on its emergency watchlist for 2025 and a recent assessment found that people in the northeast of the country were facing unsafe childbirth conditions, cold-related illnesses, water contamination, and shortages of medical supplies.
Charles last month said he would be “praying for Syria” as he attended a church service in London attended by various faiths.
The king met Syrian nun Sister Annie Demerjian at the event, who described the situation in her homeland after the regime had been swept from power.
After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader
ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party met Thursday with the parliamentary speaker and far-right MHP leader amid tentative efforts to resume dialogue between Ankara and the banned PKK militant group. DEM’s three-person delegation met with Speaker Numan Kurtulmus and then with MHP leader Devlet Bahceli.
The aim was to brief them on a rare weekend meeting with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party who is serving life without parole on Imrali prison island near Istanbul.
It was the Ocalan’s first political visit in almost a decade and follows an easing of tension between Ankara and the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil and is proscribed by Washington and Brussels as a terror group.
The visit took place two months after Bahceli extended a surprise olive branch to Ocalan, inviting him to parliament to disband the PKK and saying he should be given the “right to hope” in remarks understood to moot a possible early release.
Backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tentative opening came a month before Syrian rebels began a lightning 12-day offensive that ousted Bashar Assad in a move which has forced Turkiye’s concerns about the Kurdish issue into the headlines.
During Saturday’s meeting with DEM lawmakers Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, Ocalan said he had “the competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr.Bahceli and Mr.Erdogan.”
Onder and Buldan then “began a round of meetings with the parliamentary parties” and were joined on Thursday by Ahmet Turk, 82, a veteran Kurdish politician with a long history of involvement in efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue.
Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links
SULAIMANIYAH: Authorities in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah have banned four organizations accused of affiliation with the Turkish-blacklisted Kurdistan Workers Party, activists said Thursday, denouncing the move as “political.”
The four organizations include two feminist groups and a media production house, according to the METRO center for press freedoms which organized a news conference in Sulaimaniyah to criticize the decision.
PKK fighters have several positions in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases used to strike Kurdish insurgents.
Ankara and Washington both deem the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkiye, a terrorist organization.
Authorities in Sulaimaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s second city, have been accused of leniency toward PKK activities.
But the Iraqi federal authorities in Baghdad have recently sharpened their tone against the Turkish Kurdish insurgents.
Col. Salam Abdel Khaleq, the spokesman for the Kurdish Asayesh security forces in Sulaimaniyah, told AFP that the bans came “after a decision from the Iraqi judiciary and as a result of the expiration of the licenses” of these groups.
Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said on Thursday its special forces raided an underground missile production site in Syria in September that it said was primed to produce hundreds of precision missiles for use against Israel by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
The complex near Masyaf, in Hama province close to the Mediterranean coast, was “the flagship of Iranian manufacturing efforts in our region,” Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told a briefing with reporters.
“This facility was designed to manufacture hundreds of strategic missiles per year from start to finish, for Hezbollah to use in their aerial attacks on Israel,” he said.
He said the plant, dug into the side of a mountain, had been under observation by Israeli intelligence since construction work began in 2017 and was on the point of being able to manufacture precision-guided long-range missiles, some of them with a range of up to 300 km (190 miles).
“This ability was becoming active, so we’re talking about an immediate threat,” he said.
Details of the Sept. 8 raid have been reported in the Israeli media in recent days but Shoshani said this was the first confirmation by the military, which usually does not comment on special forces operations of this type.
At the time, Syrian state media said at least 16 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the west of the country.
Shoshani said the hours-long nighttime raid was “one of the more complex operations the IDF has done in recent years.” Accompanied by airstrikes, it involved dozens of aircraft and around 100 helicopter-borne troops, who located weapons and seized documents, he said.
“At the end of the raid, the troops dismantled the facility, including the machines and the manufacturing equipment themselves,” he said, adding that dismantling the plant was “key to ensure the safety of Israel.”
Israeli officials have accused the former Syrian government of President Bahar Assad of helping the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement receive arms from Iran and say they are determined to stop the flow of weapons into Lebanon.
As Bashar Assad’s government crumbled toward the end of last year, Israel launched a series of strikes against Syrian military infrastructure and weapons manufacturing sites to ensure they did not fall into the hands of its enemies.
