Foreign workers trapped and terrified in Lebanon’s conflict

The International Organization for Migration says Lebanon hosts more than 177,000 migrant workers, primarily from Africa and Asia. (Department of Migrant Workers File Photo)
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Updated 18 October 2024
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Foreign workers trapped and terrified in Lebanon’s conflict

  • “I feel that the end is near for me — worse than when I had cancer,” said Brinces, 46,
  • Nazmul Shahin, who works at a supermarket in Beirut’s Achrafieh neighborhood, says explosions jolt him awake at night

MANILA/LAGOS/DHAKA: Cici Brinces came to Lebanon as a domestic worker 14 years ago, married a Palestinian, had a son, survived leukaemia and was building a new life. Then bombs began falling in Beirut and now she wants to go home to the Philippines.
“I feel that the end is near for me — worse than when I had cancer,” said Brinces, 46, who fled her home near the airport two weeks ago and lived on the streets for days before moving into a shelter with her 10-year-old son.
Nazmul Shahin, who works at a supermarket in Beirut’s Achrafieh neighborhood, says explosions jolt him awake at night.
“My heart begins pounding — and it feels like something is gnawing at my entrails,” the 30-year-old Bangladeshi citizen, who has been living in Lebanon for about a year, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview from Beirut.
Md Al Mamun loves the job he got at a Beirut bakery three months ago, but now he too wants to go home to Bangladesh.
“I really like it here — the pay and the environment are so much better — but since the bombing began, I have been badly missing home,” he said.
A nearly year-long conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group has intensified in recent weeks, with Israel bombing southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley, killing many of Hezbollah’s top leaders, and sending ground troops into southern Lebanon.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has fired rockets into Israel.
Lebanese authorities say at least 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced and more than 2,300 people killed since last October, the majority in recent weeks.
Most of the country’s 900 shelters are full and people are now sleeping in the open or in Beirut’s parks.
Among them are many foreign workers.
The International Organization for Migration says Lebanon hosts more than 177,000 migrant workers, primarily from Africa and Asia. Human Rights Watch has quoted Lebanon’s Labour Ministry as saying the number is around 250,000.
They mostly comprise women who work in the domestic and hospitality sectors and are employed under the kafala system, a sponsorship model also common in Gulf nations where employers control the legal status of any migrants who work for them.
Uganda-based activist Safina Virani, who is fundraising online to get food and shelter to African migrants, said many women had been cut adrift by their employers, who fled when the Israeli attacks began.
“Many said their employers took their passports at the airport as soon as they arrived, and they didn’t give (them) to them again. They have no money, and their employers abandoned them as soon as the war broke, and they didn’t give them their documents,” Virani told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Uganda’s capital Kampala.
“Most of them don’t have bank accounts or documents that can identify them officially,” Virani said, explaining that this made it difficult for relatives back home to send money.
Virani said stranded Africans also faced discrimination.
“African migrants are being treated as second-class citizens, and this has a lot to do with racism, and that is why governments need to take the protection of the citizens seriously,” she said.

’PLEASE SEND AIRPLANES’
There are more than 11,000 documented Filipino workers in Lebanon. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has ordered the government to prepare for a safe and timely repatriation of its citizens.
This is exactly what Brinces, whose husband is working in Nigeria, wants.
“President Marcos, please send airplanes here for us, like what other nationalities did for their countrymen,” she said.
Some 500 Filipinos have been repatriated since last year and by Oct. 8, the Philippines embassy in Beirut had received more than 1,700 applications for repatriation.
The embassy has set up temporary shelters for Filipino workers, but Brinces said many people were reluctant to use them as cellphones were at times restricted so they could lose contact with home.
Some Filipinos say the embassy has been slow to help.
“My sister only got repetitive replies from government chatbots, until they asked her to go to the embassy in Beirut which was impossible for her because her employer won’t allow her to and she did not have her passport,” said Mark Anthony Bunda, whose sister works in Lebanon as a domestic helper.
Brinces’ situation is different: she has her documents but her passport has expired and she needs exit clearance from the Lebanese authorities as a foreign worker.
When she first fled her home, she sent her son to live with her mother-in-law in the relative safety of the mountains outside Beirut. She wanted to stay close to the embassy in case there was news of repatriation.
“The embassy told me they can’t respond to our requests all at once. Especially since the government here has been slow to process our applications,” she said.
She has now been reunited with her son and is living in a shelter in the capital.

FRAUDSTERS AND DONATIONS
Among many African workers in Lebanon, there are some 26,000 Kenyans, according to foreign ministry data, many a direct result of an agreement between Kenya’s National Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Lebanese companies.
The Kenyan government told Kenyans to register with the embassy in Kuwait for free evacuation and has allocated 100 million Kenyan shillings ($778,210) for the evacuation.
Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi said almost 1,500 people had already registered.
The government has also warned people to be aware of fraudsters offering fake evacuations for exorbitant fees.
“We would like to alert all Kenyans currently in Lebanon about reports of fraudsters exploiting vulnerable individuals. These individuals are unlawfully charging fees for evacuation services,” the ministry of foreign and diaspora affairs said in a statement.
About 150,000 Bangladeshis are also in Lebanon, working in petrol stations, supermarkets, garages and as cleaners. Bangladeshis typically pay about 500,000 taka ($4,200) to migration brokers to get a job in Lebanon.
Officials at Bangladesh’s embassy in Beirut are providing medical care and advice and have started collecting information on those who want to return home.
Md Touhid Hossain, foreign adviser for the interim government in Dhaka, said Bangladesh had asked the IOM to arrange a chartered flight to evacuate Bangladeshis.
Siddikor Rahman, who has worked as a supervisor in a Lebanese factory for about 10 years, said many Bangladeshis have lost their jobs and homes since the airstrikes and are surviving in shelters provided by the community and the embassy.
“Those of us who can afford to lend a hand are supporting our compatriots — either giving them cash, buying food for them, or providing them shelter,” said Shahin.
“But my heart is sinking day by day and the only thing I hope for is to go home,” he said.

NO EASY DECISION
Virani has been working with Lebanese activist Dea Hage-Chahine to reach vulnerable female migrant workers.
Hage-Chahine told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Beirut that she had secured a private building for a few months to house 147 Sierra Leonean women and three babies who had been sleeping outside their embassy in Beirut.
Working with a team of just four, she has also rented five apartments for another group of 58 Africans, mostly Sierra Leoneans, and liaised with their government to obtain the paperwork they need to get home.
“Migrant communities in Lebanon are marginalized and ignored, and you can imagine what is happening while we are going through a war and a huge humanitarian crisis; we need support,” she said.
“We’re working on the paperwork for the women, but we’re worried that we won’t be able to secure flights. We’re hoping the government will send a plane,” she said.
Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister Timothy Musa Kabba told local media that because the government doesn’t have a trade employment deal with Lebanon, it has been difficult for them to quickly evacuate the workers.
However, the administration is working with IOM and leaders of the Sierra Leonean community in Lebanon to congregate citizens in a safe place while they process their repatriation.
Leaving Lebanon is not an easy choice for everyone.
In South Lebanon, Filipino domestic helper Ritchel Bagsican said she could not sleep because of the airstrikes and drones.
But the 32-year-old, who has been in Lebanon for nine years and has applied for repatriation, is torn about going home.
“Despite the economic crisis and the war here in Lebanon, job opportunities here are still better than in the Philippines. Work is not guaranteed there, so we might have to work abroad again,” she said.


Australia closes Iran embassy citing deteriorating security environment

Updated 4 sec ago
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Australia closes Iran embassy citing deteriorating security environment

SYDNEY: Australia has suspended operations at its embassy in Tehran due to the deteriorating security environment in Iran and has directed the departure of all Australian officials, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Friday.
Australia’s ambassador to Iran will remain in the region to support the government’s response to the crisis, Wong said.
“We are continuing planning to support Australians seeking to depart Iran, and we remain in close contact with other partner countries,” Wong said in a statement.


Israeli scientists reel after Iranian missile strikes premier research institute

Updated 4 min 9 sec ago
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Israeli scientists reel after Iranian missile strikes premier research institute

  • “It’s a moral victory” for Iran, said Oren Schuldiner

REHOVOT, Israel: For years, Israel has targeted Iranian nuclear scientists, hoping to choke progress on Iran’s nuclear program by striking at the brains behind it.
Now, with Iran and Israel in an open-ended direct conflict, scientists in Israel have found themselves in the crosshairs after an Iranian missile struck a premier research institute known for its work in life sciences and physics, among other fields.
While no one was killed in the strike on the Weizmann Institute of Science early Sunday, it caused heavy damage to multiple labs on campus, snuffing out years of scientific research and sending a chilling message to Israeli scientists that they and their expertise are now targets in the escalating conflict with Iran.
“It’s a moral victory” for Iran, said Oren Schuldiner, a professor in the department of molecular cell biology and the department of molecular neuroscience whose lab was obliterated in the strike. “They managed to harm the crown jewel of science in Israel.”
Iranian scientists were a prime target in a long shadow war
During years of a shadow war between Israel and Iran that preceded the current conflict, Israel repeatedly targeted Iranian nuclear scientists with the aim of setting back Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel continued that tactic with its initial blow against Iran days ago, killing multiple nuclear scientists, along with top generals, as well as striking nuclear facilities and ballistic missile infrastructure.
For its part, Iran has been accused of targeting at least one Weizmann scientist before. Last year, Israeli authorities said they busted an Iranian spy ring that devised a plot to follow and assassinate an Israeli nuclear scientist who worked and lived at the institute.
Citing an indictment, Israeli media said the suspects, Palestinians from east Jerusalem, gathered information about the scientist and photographed the exterior of the Weizmann Institute but were arrested before they could proceed.
With Iran’s intelligence penetration into Israel far less successful than Israel’s, those plots have not been seen through, making this week’s strike on Weizmann that much more jarring.
“The Weizmann Institute has been in Iran’s sights,” said Yoel Guzansky, an Iran expert and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank. He stressed that he did not know for certain whether Iran intended to strike the institute but believed it did.
While it is a multidisciplinary research institute, Weizmann, like other Israeli universities, has ties to Israel’s defense establishment, including collaborations with industry leaders like Elbit Systems, which is why it may have been targeted.
But Guzansky said the institute primarily symbolizes “Israeli scientific progress” and the strike against it shows Iran’s thinking: “You harm our scientists, so we are also harming  scientific cadre.”
Damage to the institute and labs ‘literally decimated’
Weizmann, founded in 1934 and later renamed after Israel’s first president, ranks among the world’s top research institutes. Its scientists and researchers publish hundreds of studies each year. One Nobel laureate in chemistry and three Turing Award laureates have been associated with the institute, which built the first computer in Israel in 1954.
Two buildings were hit in the strike, including one housing life sciences labs and a second that was empty and under construction but meant for chemistry study, according to the institute. Dozens of other buildings were damaged.
The campus has been closed since the strike, although media were allowed to visit Thursday. Large piles of rock, twisted metal and other debris were strewn on campus. There were shattered windows, collapsed ceiling panels and charred walls.
A photo shared on X by one professor showed flames rising near a heavily damaged structure with debris scattered on the ground nearby.
“Several buildings were hit quite hard, meaning that some labs were literally decimated, really leaving nothing,” said Sarel Fleishman, a professor of biochemics who said he has visited the site since the strike.
Life’s work of many researchers is gone
Many of those labs focus on the life sciences, whose projects are especially sensitive to physical damage, Fleishman said. The labs were studying areas like tissue generation, developmental biology or cancer, with much of their work now halted or severely set back by the damage.
“This was the life’s work of many people,” he said, noting that years’ or even decades’ worth of research was destroyed.
For Schuldiner, the damage means the lab he has worked at for 16 years “is entirely gone. No trace. There is nothing to save.”
In that once gleaming lab, he kept thousands of genetically modified flies used for research into the development of the human nervous system, which helped provide insights into autism and schizophrenia, he said.
The lab housed equipment like sophisticated microscopes. Researchers from Israel and abroad joined hands in the study effort.
“All of our studies have stopped,” he said, estimating it would take years to rebuild and get the science work back on track. “It’s very significant damage to the science that we can create and to the contribution we can make to the world.”


IAEA chief identifies Isfahan as Iran’s planned uranium enrichment site

Updated 15 min 5 sec ago
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IAEA chief identifies Isfahan as Iran’s planned uranium enrichment site

  • Day before Israel launched its military strikes, Iran announced it had built a new uranium enrichment facility, which it would soon equip and bring online
  • Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities destroyed one of those plants and put another out of action by killing its power supply

VIENNA: UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on Thursday identified Isfahan, home to one of Iran’s biggest nuclear facilities, as the location of a uranium enrichment plant that Iran said it would soon open in retaliation for a diplomatic push against it.
The day before Israel launched its military strikes against Iranian targets including nuclear facilities last Friday, Iran announced it had built a new uranium enrichment facility, which it would soon equip and bring online. Tehran did not provide details such as the plant’s location.
Iran’s announcement was part of its retaliation against a resolution passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors declaring Tehran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations over issues including its failure to credibly explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites.
Had it gone online, the new enrichment plant would have been the fourth in operation in Iran. But Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities destroyed one of those plants and put another out of action by killing its power supply, the IAEA has said.
“There was an announcement, quite coincidentally, on the eve of the start of the military operation by Israel of a new enrichment facility in Isfahan, precisely, that we were going to be inspecting immediately, but this inspection had to be postponed, we hope, because of the start of the military operation,” Grossi said.
He did not say where exactly in Isfahan the planned plant was, but he said the nuclear complex there is “huge.”
The IAEA has previously reported that Israeli military strikes on Friday damaged four buildings at Isfahan, including the Uranium Conversion Facility that transforms “yellowcake” uranium into the uranium hexafluoride feedstock for centrifuges so that it can be enriched.
Grossi told the BBC on Monday that the “underground spaces” at Isfahan did not seem to have been affected. Officials say those spaces are also where much of Iran’s most highly enriched uranium stock has been stored.
The IAEA has not, however, been able to carry out any inspections since the strikes.


Jordan FM holds talks with French, Irish, Slovak counterparts on Gaza crisis, Iran tensions

Updated 46 min 17 sec ago
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Jordan FM holds talks with French, Irish, Slovak counterparts on Gaza crisis, Iran tensions

  • Ayman Safadi says negotiations between Israel and Iran ‘the only way to protect the region from the expansion of the war’
  • Foreign minister praises France, Saudi Arabia for co-leading efforts to organize global forum on two-state solution

AMMAN: Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi held a series of discussions on Thursday with European counterparts from France, Ireland, and Slovakia, focusing on efforts to end the escalating crises in the Middle East and revive diplomatic paths toward peace.

In Paris, Safadi met with French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot, with the two ministers stressing the urgent need to de-escalate tensions between Israel and Iran and resume negotiations as “the only way to protect the region from the expansion of the war and its dangerous repercussions.”

Safadi welcomed talks planned for Friday in Geneva between France, Germany, the US, and Iran, expressing hope they would give diplomacy a chance to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, the Jordan News Agency reported.

Both he and Barrot also called for intensified international efforts to secure a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and ensure the immediate and sufficient delivery of humanitarian aid.

Safadi said the inhumane reality in Gaza, marked by massacres, starvation, and collective suffering, must end, and warned that illegal Israeli measures in the West Bank are further eroding chances of a viable two-state solution.

He reiterated Jordan’s backing of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and called for international recognition of the state of Palestine, saying such a move affirms the “inevitability” of the two-state solution as the only path to a just peace.

Safadi also praised France’s “key” role in co-leading efforts, alongside Saudi Arabia, to organize an international conference on the two-state solution, which had been postponed due to the recent Iran-Israel escalation.

The ministers also addressed the situation in Syria, highlighting the need for a unified approach that supports Syria’s sovereignty, eliminates terrorism, ensures refugee return and lays the groundwork for reconstruction.

They reaffirmed their commitment to Lebanon’s stability and the wider humanitarian mission in Gaza.

In a separate phone call with Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs Simon Harris, Safadi discussed similar themes, with both stressing that ending the war and resuming nuclear negotiations with Iran were essential to resolving broader regional instability.

They called for enhanced UN humanitarian access to Gaza and warned against actions in the West Bank that could jeopardize the two-state solution. Safadi thanked Ireland for its longstanding support of Palestinian statehood and rights in line with international law.

Later in the day, Safadi also held talks with Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar. The pair echoed concerns over regional escalation and underlined the urgency of a ceasefire in Gaza.

Safadi and Blanar also explored ways to deepen ties and expand cooperation between Jordan and the EU, reaffirming a shared commitment to regional peace and security.


Israel changing ‘the world’ with Iran war: Netanyahu

Updated 57 min 17 sec ago
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Israel changing ‘the world’ with Iran war: Netanyahu

  • The Israeli prime minister welcomed ‘all help‘ in destroying the Islamic republic’s nuclear sites, in an apparent nod to the US

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel was “changing the face of the world” in its war with Iran, as he welcomed “all help” in destroying the Islamic republic’s nuclear sites.
“I said that we’re changing the face of the Middle East, and now I say we’re changing the face of the world,” he told public broadcaster Kansas
Seven days into the war, Netanyahu said Israeli forces were ahead of schedule in their offensive against Iranian nuclear and missile sites, but refused to provide a clear timeline for an end to the most intense confrontation in history with arch foe Tehran.
“We are at war. I’m not going to reveal our timeline. I’m not going to tell them (the Iranians) what we’re preparing,” said Netanyahu.
“When you enter a war, you know when it begins, but not when it ends,” he added.
He said Israel had already destroyed “more than half” of Iran’s missile launchers and was “capable of striking all of Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
But, in an apparent nod to key ally the United States, Netanyahu added: “All help is welcome.”
During his interview with Kan, Netanyahu went on to say that US President Donald Trump “will do what is good for for the United States, and I will do what is good for the State of Israel.”
Following the remarks, Trump offered a fresh timeline for a possible US intervention in the conflict, saying in a statement that he would decide whether to attack Iran within the next two weeks due to a “substantial” chance of negotiations.