Unable to bear economic pressures in Lebanon, Syrian refugees head back home

Syrian refugees wave from on board a bus in a Beirut suburb as they prepare to return home to neighboring Syria. (AFP/File)
Short Url
Updated 31 August 2021
Follow

Unable to bear economic pressures in Lebanon, Syrian refugees head back home

  • PM-designate Najib Mikati has so far failed to overcome obstacles and form govt

BEIRUT: The economic crisis in Lebanon is prompting a remarkable number of Syrian workers residing in the country to return to Syria.

The number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon has decreased to 851,717, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees’ latest census, though the Lebanese government stopped allowing the UNHCR to register Syrians as refugees in 2015.

The crisis has also led to confrontations between Lebanese and Syrian refugees, with the financial collapse exacerbated by the country’s political paralysis. Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati has so far failed to overcome a series of long-running obstacles and form a government.

Syrian workers and refugees are paying a heavy price as a result, with the World Bank ranking the situation among the world’s three worst financial crises since the mid-19th century.

Mahmoud, a concierge in one of Beirut’s residential neighborhoods, said that he came from Syria in 2005, settled in Lebanon and had six children.

With his monthly salary and the assistance provided by residents in the building, he explained that he was able to make ends meet, but with the vast rise in prices, he cannot now provide for his family.

Mahmoud is no longer able to stay in Lebanon, so has decided to return to Manbij in northern Syria after his relatives, who were also working in Lebanon, went back and encouraged him to follow.

UNHCR spokeswoman Lisa Abu Khaled told Arab News: “Like all communities in Lebanon, refugees are deeply affected by the compounded crisis and critical situation affecting the country, with … around 90 percent living in extreme poverty and making difficult choices of survival every single day, including skipping meals, not seeking urgent medical treatment, and sending children to work.”

She noted: “Over the last 18 months, the Lebanese currency lost more than 85 percent of its value, with the poorest communities being the hardest hit.”

Abu Khaled added: “As is the case in all communities, the situation of Syrian refugees in Lebanon had been quite difficult long before the economic meltdown. Their situation is made even more impossible today.”

A few years back, numerous Syrians crossed into Lebanon illegally. But refugees now speak about some families silently returning as they can no longer bear the economic pressures they face.

Voice of Syrian Refugees’ Lebanon spokesperson Abu Ahmed Soaiba said the UNHCR had recently received more than 150 requests from Syrian refugees living in rented houses, asking it to allow them to set up tents inside refugee camps in Lebanon.

She told Arab News: “Landlords are demanding refugees to pay rent either in dollars or in Lebanese pounds according to the daily exchange rate on the black market. Where would an unemployed refugee come up with 1.5 million Lebanese pounds ($995) to pay rent for a mere studio apartment?”

Soaiba added: “A Syrian refugee left his tent at midnight on Sunday in the town of Arsal, which includes the largest concentration of refugees in Lebanon, and started screaming hysterically. He wanted to burn the tent with his family in it and then commit suicide, saying that he was no longer able to put food on the table for his wife and children. He was crying out that death is more honorable than helplessness.”

A UN report has warned that half of the Syrian refugee families in Lebanon suffer from food insecurity.

Soaiba said a Syrian woman took her son, who suffers from a severe disability in his back, to Beirut to be examined by a doctor.

“When she returned, she started crying in the middle of the camp, saying that transportation to Beirut and back cost them 700,000 Lebanese pounds, and the doctor told her that there was nothing he could do for her son and referred them to another doctor with a different specialty.”

The aid the refugees receive as part of the response plan to the Syrian refugee crisis funded by international community organizations has lost 69 percent of its value.

It has decreased to around 100,000 Lebanese pounds per person.

A refugee receives $27, but the bank pays it in Lebanese pounds, at the exchange rate of 3,900 pounds to the dollar.

A refugee in Bekaa said: “The owner of the electricity generator raised the subscription fee from 55,000 Lebanese pounds to 220,000 Lebanese pounds for one ampere. If I pay this fee I will no longer be able to afford a bundle of bread. Our life inside the plastic tent has become hell.”

Many Syrian refugees, much like the Lebanese who are affected by the severe economic crisis, resorted to adapting to the situation by reducing health and education expenses.

The phenomena of Syrian child labor and early marriage among females have also increased.

A Syrian refugee is not legally allowed to work in Lebanon, while a Syrian worker has the right to work specific jobs in the construction, agriculture and cleaning services sectors.

Lebanon is one of the world’s smallest countries hosting one of the largest number of refugees in the world, but the Lebanese authorities refuse to officially recognize them as refugees, calling them displaced people instead, and urging the international community to facilitate their return to Syria.

Several revealed that many of them have been subjected to exploitation and racist treatment.

Soaiba said: “Syrian refugees rely on motorcycles for transportation, which is less expensive than using cabs. Nowadays, they are insulted at gas stations, where they are either refused service or forced to pay more than the specified price.”

On Saturday, a dispute occurred in the town of Kawkaba in western Bekaa between young men from the town and Syrians.

The dispute turned into a fight with weapons, which led to the serious injury of two Lebanese youths.

The situation in the town, which has been inhabited by nearly 900 Syrian refugees for years, has remained tense, necessitating the intervention of army intelligence and security services, which surrounded the town until the early hours of the morning to prevent any further escalation.

The townspeople in Kawkaba unanimously asked the Syrian families to leave the town within hours.

Most of the refugees, the majority of whom work in agriculture and the construction sector, vacated their homes and moved their belongings outside the town.

Tension is not limited to conflicts between Lebanese and Syrians but has become prevalent among many Lebanese themselves.

On Sunday, disputes renewed between the people of Maghdoucheh, east of Sidon, and the people of the neighboring town of Aanqoun, against the background of access to fuel from a station in Maghdoucheh.

These tensions almost turned into sectarian clashes between the two towns, as a group of Shiite youths stormed the Christian town of Maghdoucheh, leading to retaliation, with several people injured. Calm was restored after political and religious figures met on Sunday night.


Trump calls for deal on Gaza war as signs of progress emerge

Updated 54 min 48 sec ago
Follow

Trump calls for deal on Gaza war as signs of progress emerge

  • ‘MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!’ Trump wrote on his social media platform
  • The Israeli military on Sunday ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians in large swathes of northern Gaza

TEL AVIV: US President Donald Trump on Sunday pleaded for progress in ceasefire talks in the war in Gaza, calling for a deal that would halt the fighting in the 20-monthlong conflict as the sides appeared to be inching closer to an agreement.

An Israeli official said plans were being made for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to travel to Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks, a sign there may be movement on a new deal. The official declined to discuss the focus of the visit and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not yet been finalized.

“MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social early Sunday between posts about a Senate vote on his tax and spending cuts bill.

Trump raised expectations Friday for a deal, saying there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week. Taking questions from reporters, he said, “We’re working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of.”

Trump has repeatedly called for Israel and Hamas to end the war in Gaza. Despite an eight-week ceasefire reached just as Trump was taking office earlier this year, attempts since then to bring the sides toward a new agreement have failed.

A top adviser to Netanyahu, Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, was set to travel to Washington this week for talks on a ceasefire.

Trump post slams Netanyahu corruption trial

The Gaza message wasn’t the only Middle East-related post by Trump. On Saturday evening, he doubled down on his criticism of the legal proceedings against Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, calling it “a POLITICAL WITCH HUNT, very similar to the Witch Hunt that I was forced to endure.”

In the post on Truth Social, he said the trial interfered with talks on a Gaza ceasefire.

“(Netanyahu) is right now in the process of negotiating a Deal with Hamas, which will include getting the Hostages back. How is it possible that the Prime Minister of Israel can be forced to sit in a Courtroom all day long, over NOTHING,” Trump wrote.

The post echoed similar remarks Trump made last week when he called for the trial to be canceled. It was a dramatic interference by an international ally in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state. And it unnerved many in Israel, despite Trump’s popularity in the country.

Israeli military orders new evacuations in northern Gaza

The Israeli military on Sunday ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians in large swathes of northern Gaza, an early target of the war that has been severely damaged by multiple rounds of fighting.

Col. Avichay Adraee, a military spokesperson, posted the order on social media. It includes multiple neighborhoods in eastern and northern Gaza City, as well as Jabaliya refugee camp.

The military will expand its escalating attacks to the city’s northern section, calling for people to move southward to the Muwasi area in southern Gaza, Adraee said.

After being all but emptied earlier in the war, hundreds of thousands of people are in northern Gaza following their return during a ceasefire earlier this year.

An Israeli military offensive currently underway aims to move Palestinians to southern Gaza so forces can more freely operate to combat militants. Rights groups say their movement would amount to forcible transfer.

A sticking point over how the war ends

The war in Gaza began with Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas in which militants killed 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages, about 50 of whom remain captive with less than half believed to be alive.

Israel’s retaliatory response has killed more than 56,000 people, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish between militants and civilians in their count but say more than half of the dead are women and children.

The war has set off a humanitarian catastrophe, displaced most of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, and obliterated much of the territory’s urban landscape.

Talks between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly faltered over one major sticking point, whether the war should end as part of any ceasefire agreement.

Hamas says it is willing to free all the hostages in exchange for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to the war. Israel rejects that offer, saying it will agree to end the war if Hamas disarms and goes into exile, something the group refuses.


Netanyahu ‘must go’, says former Israeli PM Bennett

Updated 29 June 2025
Follow

Netanyahu ‘must go’, says former Israeli PM Bennett

  • Former PM Naftali Bennett: Netanyahu ‘has been in power for 20 years... that’s too much, it’s not healthy’

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must leave office, his predecessor Naftali Bennett has told a televised interview, refusing to say whether he intends to challenge the country’s longest-serving leader in an election.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 that aired on Saturday, former prime minister Bennett said Netanyahu “has been in power for 20 years... that’s too much, it’s not healthy.”

“He bears... heavy responsibility for the divisions in Israeli society,” Bennett said of growing rifts within Israel under Netanyahu, who has a strong support base but also staunch opponents who have demanded his departure including over his handling of the Gaza war since October 2023.

Netanyahu “must go,” said the former prime minister, a right-wing leader who in 2021 joined forces with Netanyahu critics to form a coalition that ousted him from the premiership after 12 consecutive years at the helm.

But the fragile coalition government Bennett had led along with current opposition chief Yair Lapid collapsed after about a year. Snap elections ensued, and Netanyahu again assumed the premiership with backing from far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties.

Bennett, who has taken time off from politics, has been rumored to be planning a comeback, with public opinion polls suggesting he may have enough support to oust Netanyahu again.

No vote is currently planned before late 2026, however, although early elections are common in Israel.

In his Saturday interview, Bennett claimed credit for laying the groundwork for Israel’s bombardment campaign earlier this month against Iranian nuclear and military sites.

The decision to launch attacks against the Islamic republic “was very good” and “needed,” said Bennett, claiming that the offensive would not have been possible without the work of his short-lived government.

In Gaza, where Israel has waged war since Hamas’s October 2023 attack, Bennett said the military has displayed “exceptional” performance but “the political management of the country” was “a catastrophe, a disaster.”

Criticizing the Netanyahu government’s “inability to decide,” the former prime minister called for an immediate “comprehensive” agreement that would see all remaining hostages freed from Gaza.

“Leave the task of eliminating Hamas to a future government,” said Bennett, who also evaded several questions about whether he intends to run for office.


Sudan civil war overwhelms border town in neighbor Chad as refugees find little help

Updated 29 June 2025
Follow

Sudan civil war overwhelms border town in neighbor Chad as refugees find little help

  • 235,000 Sudanese in a border town
  • Sudanese try to fill aid gaps

ADRE, Chad: Fatima Omas Abdullah wakes up every morning with aches and pains from sleeping on bare ground for almost two years. She did not expect Sudan’s civil war to displace her for so long into neighboring Chad.
“There is nothing here,” she said, crying and shaking the straw door of her makeshift home. Since April 2023, she has been in the Adre transit camp a few hundred meters from the Sudanese border, along with almost a quarter-million others fleeing the fighting.
Now the US- backed aid system that kept hundreds of thousands like Abdullah alive on the edge of one of the world’s most devastating wars is fraying. Under the Trump administration, key foreign aid has been slashed and funding withdrawn from United Nations programs that feed, treat and shelter refugees.
In 2024, the US contributed $39.3 million to the emergency response in Chad. So far this year, it has contributed about $6.8 million, the UN says. Overall, only 13 percent of the requested money to support refugees in Chad this year has come in from all donors, according to UN data.
In Adre, humanitarian services were already limited as refugees are meant to move to more established camps deeper inside Chad.
Many Sudanese, however, choose to stay. Some are heartened by the military’s recent successes against rival paramilitary forces in the capital, Khartoum. They have swelled the population of this remote, arid community that was never meant to hold so many. Prices have shot up. Competition over water is growing.
Adre isn’t alone. As the fighting inside Sudan’s remote Darfur region shifts, the stream of refugees has created a new, more isolated transit camp called Tine. Since late April, 46,000 people have arrived.
With the aid cuts, there is even less to offer them there.

235,000 Sudanese in a border town
Adre has become a fragile frontline for an estimated 235,000 Sudanese. They are among the 1.2 million who have fled into eastern Chad.
Before the civil war, Adre was a town of about 40,000. As Sudanese began to arrive, sympathetic residents with longtime cross-border ties offered them land.
Now there is a sea of markets and shelters, along with signs of Sudanese intending to stay. Some refugees are constructing multi-story buildings.
Sudanese-run businesses form one of Adre’s largest markets. Locals and refugees barter in Sudanese pounds for everything from produce to watches.
“There is respect between the communities,” said resident Asadiq Hamid Abdullah, who runs a donkey cart. “But everyone is complaining that the food is more expensive.”
Chad is one of the world’s poorest countries, with almost 50 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
Locals say the price of water has quadrupled since the start of Sudan’s civil war as demand rises. Sudanese women told The Associated Press that fights had broken out at the few water pumps for them, installed by the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.
Even food aid could run out shortly. The UN World Food Program says funding to support Sudanese refugees in Adre is guaranteed only until July, as the US aid cuts force a 30 percent reduction in staff worldwide. The UN refugee agency has seen 30 percent of its funding cut for this area, eastern Chad.
Samia Ahmed, who cradled her 3-year-old and was pregnant with her second child, said she has found work cleaning and doing laundry because the WFP rations don’t last the month.
“I see a gloomy future,” she said.

Sudanese try to fill aid gaps
Sudanese are trying to fill gaps in aid, running private schools and their own humanitarian area with a health clinic and women’s center.
Local and UN authorities, however, are increasing the pressure on them to leave Adre. There are too many people here, they say.
“A vast city,” said Hamit Hadjer Abdullai with Chad’s National Commission for the Reception and Reintegration of Refugees.
He said crime was increasing. Police warn of the Colombians, a Sudanese gang. Locals said it operates with impunity, though Abdullai claimed that seven leaders have been jailed.
“People must move,” said Benoit Kayembe Mukendi, the UN refugee agency’s local representative. “For security reasons and for their protection.”
As the Chadian population begins to demand their land back, Mukendi warned of a bigger security issue ahead.
But most Sudanese won’t go. The AP spoke to dozens who said they had been relocated to camps and returned to Adre to be closer to their homeland and the transit camp’s economic opportunities.
There are risks. Zohal Abdullah Hamad was relocated but returned to run a coffee stand. One day, a nearby argument escalated and gunfire broke out. Hamad was shot in the gut.
“I became cold. I was immobile,” she said, crying as she recalled the pain. She said she has closed her business.
The latest Sudanese arrivals to Adre have no chance to establish themselves. On the order of local authorities, they are moved immediately to other camps. The UN said it is transporting 2,000 of them a day.

In Tine, arriving Sudanese find nothing
The new and rapidly growing camp of Tine, around 180 kilometers (111 miles) north of Adre, has seen 46,000 refugees arrive since late April from Northern Darfur.
Their sheer numbers caused a UN refugee representative to gasp.
Thousands jostle for meager portions of food distributed by community kitchens. They sleep on the ground in the open desert, shaded by branches and strips of fabric. They bring witness accounts of attacks in Zamzam and El-Fasher: rape, robbery, relatives shot before their eyes.
With the US aid cuts, the UN and partners cannot respond as before, when people began to pour into Adre after the start of the war, UN representative Jean Paul Habamungu Samvura said.
“If we have another Adre here … it will be a nightmare.”


France offers to help make Gaza food distribution safer

Updated 29 June 2025
Follow

France offers to help make Gaza food distribution safer

  • Barrot expressed anger over "the 500 people who have lost their life in food distribution" in Gaza in recent weeks

PARIS: France “stands ready, Europe as well, to contribute to the safety of food distribution” in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Saturday.
His comments came as criticism grew over mounting civilian deaths at Israeli-backed food distribution centers in the territory.
Such an initiative, he added, would also deal with Israeli concerns that armed groups such as Hamas were getting hold of the aid.
Barrot expressed anger over “the 500 people who have lost their life in food distribution” in Gaza in recent weeks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyanu on Friday denounced as a “blood libel” a report in left-leaning daily Haaretz alleging that military commanders had ordered soldiers to fire at Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid in Gaza
Aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday denounced the Israel- and US-backed food distribution effort in Gaza as “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid.”
And UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that hungry people in Gaza seeking food must not face a “death sentence.”
The health ministry in Gaza, a territory controlled by Hamas, says that since late May, more than 500 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce supplies.
 

 


Iran could again enrich uranium ‘in matter of months’: IAEA chief

Updated 29 June 2025
Follow

Iran could again enrich uranium ‘in matter of months’: IAEA chief

  • “They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi said Friday, according to a transcript of the interview released Saturday

WASHINGTON: UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi says Iran likely will be able to begin to produce enriched uranium “in a matter of months,” despite damage to several nuclear facilities from US and Israeli attacks, CBS News said Saturday.
Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear and military sites on June 13, saying it was aimed at keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition the Islamic republic has consistently denied.
The United States subsequently bombed three key facilities used for Tehran’s atomic program.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the extent of the damage to the nuclear sites is “serious,” but the details are unknown. US President Donald Trump insisted Iran’s nuclear program had been set back “decades.”
But Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said “some is still standing.”
“They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi said Friday, according to a transcript of the interview released Saturday.
Another key question is whether Iran was able to relocate some or all of its estimated 408.6-kilo (900-pound) stockpile of highly enriched uranium before the attacks.
The uranium in question is enriched to 60 percent — above levels for civilian usage but still below weapons grade. That material, if further refined, would theoretically be sufficient to produce more than nine nuclear bombs.
Grossi admitted to CBS: “We don’t know where this material could be.”
“So some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved. So there has to be at some point a clarification,” he said in the interview.
For now, Iranian lawmakers voted to suspend cooperation with the IAEA and Tehran rejected Grossi’s request for a visit to the damaged sites, especially Fordo, the main uranium enrichment facility.
“We need to be in a position to ascertain, to confirm what is there, and where is it and what happened,” Grossi said.
In a separate interview with Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” program, Trump said he did not think the stockpile had been moved.
“It’s a very hard thing to do plus we didn’t give much notice,” he said, according to excerpts of the interview. “They didn’t move anything.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday underscored Washington’s support for “the IAEA’s critical verification and monitoring efforts in Iran,” commending Grossi and his agency for their “dedication and professionalism.”
The full Grossi interview will air on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday.