The dangerous absurdity of Lebanon's refugee camp decision

[Originally posted at NOW]

See if you can follow the logic: the Lebanese government is now concerned that its 1.2m Syrian refugee population has become vulnerable to infiltration – or has indeed already been infiltrated – by extremist Islamist groups. At the back of its and everyone else’s mind is the battle last month between Islamic State (IS) jihadists and the Lebanese army in the border town of Arsal, where gunmen were reported to have emerged from the makeshift camps housing thousands of refugees in the adjacent and otherwise barren Wadi Hmayyed region, beyond the final Lebanese army checkpoint but before the first Syrian one.

To mitigate this worry, the government now plans to move refugees currently scattered across the developed areas of the country, where their activities are closely monitored by security and intelligence forces, to precisely the same jihadist safe haven from which IS launched its August attack.

Citing “social and security concerns,” Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas told Annahar today a decision has been made to “establish experimental camps on Lebanese state territories [in areas] between the [Lebanese-Syrian] border.” This is essentially the same proposal that’s already been mulled several times in the past, and has been thoroughly criticized by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). It’s worth revisiting what they had to say about it in May:

“In our experience camps that are built on border areas can be transformed into places where armed activities take place […] The border has witnessed a good number of security incidents over the past three years and the Lebanese government does not have a permanent presence [there] to oversee the security situation.”

In other words, moving the people you suspect of harboring jihadist sympathies to a lawless no-man’s-land crawling with jihadists might not be a surefire formula for stability. And who, incidentally, is to protect the refugees, 80% of whom are women and children, from the gunmen? For months, Lebanon was unable to provide security for thousands of its own citizens in the border town of Tfeil. How far will it be willing to go to protect Syrians, who it now regards as IS fifth columnists? Will it enlist the help of the Syrian army? Hezbollah? Anyone who has spent five minutes with a Syrian refugee knows how they’d react to that notion.

On a more pedestrian note, as UNHCR also pointed out, who will provide the infrastructure? Lebanese citizens themselves in the east Beqaa are lucky to get 3 hours a day of electricity. Water is a similar lottery. Derbas told Annahar the money would come from “Arab and international” sources. Now might be the time to mention that UNHCR, three years into the Syrian refugee crisis, has only managed to raise 36% of its pledged funding. And, again, we’re talking about a territory contiguous with the most violent war zone on earth today. What happens if the security situation doesn’t permit aid workers access?

That the Syrian refugee crisis, like the wider Syrian conflict itself, has had profound repercussions on Lebanon is beyond doubt. Sadly, this plan seems less an earnest effort to resolve them than an ill-conceived capitulation to the irrational, and increasingly xenophobic, passions of the street.

Arsal civilians trapped between shells and snipers

[Originally posted at NOW]

NOW talks to Arsal residents caught in theater involving Lebanese army, Hezbollah, and militants.

As clashes rage Monday for the third day running between foreign Islamist militants and the Lebanese army – reportedly in cooperation with Hezbollah – in the remote eastern border town of Arsal, the more than 80,000-strong population, which includes over 40,000 registered Syrian refugees, is caught in a deadly trap in the middle, between the militants’ guns on the one hand and intense barrages of incoming artillery on the other.

“Armed people were everywhere,” said Khaled Hojairi, a Lebanese Arsal resident who managed to flee the town at 2pm Sunday. “I saw them shooting randomly. I had to be very careful to avoid being shot,” he told NOW.

“Yesterday, [militants] tried to target an army position close to my house,” said Abu Muhammad*, another Arsal native who spoke to NOW via telephone. “I helped the soldiers to escape by hosting them in my house for a while.” As a result, a “direct armed confrontation” ensued between the militants and local residents who took up arms to repel them.

Hours later, Abu Muhammad said his home “was [hit] by heavy weapons, the kind that only the Lebanese army and Hezbollah have […] Arsal is now being bombed randomly, all the houses are being targeted equally without differentiating between one and another.”

Along with more than a thousand other Lebanese – but not Syrians, who have reportedly been forbidden to leave – Abu Muhammad was able to flee Arsal during a temporary calm on Monday morning.

The vast majority of residents, however, were not so fortunate, and the sealing of the only road in and out of the town later Monday morning forced them to remain stuck in the middle, under fire from all sides.

“The civilians are trapped, because they can’t go in or out,” said Carol Malouf, a journalist and activist who runs a Syrian refugee camp in Wadi Hmayed, the barren, mountainous region just east of Arsal where the militants – thought to be affiliated with the Islamic State (formerly Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) and Jabhat al-Nusra factions – triggered the battle Saturday by ambushing a Lebanese army checkpoint, killing two soldiers.

“When [civilians] try to leave, there are a lot of snipers shooting at them,” Malouf told NOW. At the same time, “there has been a lot of indiscriminate shelling. Our camp in Wadi Hmayyed was hit and several tents were on fire yesterday.” A temporary truce effected at 21:00 on Sunday enabled the transfer of most of the camp residents to Arsal town center, but Malouf says they remain in significant danger there.

“The militants have checkpoints in [Arsal] itself and at its entrance,” she told NOW. “If [civilians] stay, there is fear they will be taken as human shields by the militants.”

Conditions are even worse for the scores of injured civilians who, according to Abu Muhammad, are being treated on the floors of overwhelmed local medical facilities, unable – due to the closed road – to be taken to hospitals in the nearby Beqaa Valley.

“It’s really bad, and we really need to focus on getting the civilians out,” said Malouf.

To that end, a ceasefire was ostensibly agreed upon Monday evening, supposed to come into effect at 18:00, to enable a delegation of the Association of Muslim Scholars to enter the town and negotiate the evacuation of injured civilians, the release of Lebanese soldiers held by the gunmen, and the latter’s withdrawal from Lebanon, according to Nabil al-Halabi, a member of the delegation who spoke to NOW moments after it had been agreed. The latest official information from the Lebanese army is that 14 soldiers have been killed and 86 wounded, while 22 are unaccounted for (many presumed held by the militants).

The ceasefire had not, however, come into effect at the time of writing, and was in any case not expected to be a lasting one. More army units were seen heading into Arsal and firing artillery just minutes before the ceasefire’s appointed time, and Prime Minister Tammam Salamdeclared in a statement not long before then that there would be no “leniency, truce or political solution” with the “murderous terrorists.”

Indeed, there are signs the military’s operation could expand significantly. In what appeared to be a corroboration of multiple reports of Hezbollah’s involvement in the shelling of the town, the head of the party’s religious council, Sheikh Muhammad Yazbek, said Monday “we will not leave the army [to fight] alone,” pledging to “defend [against the militants] with all the power in our hands.”

And, shortly after a Twitter account called “Arsal News Network”reported the presence of Syrian regime MiG fighter jets above Arsal Monday afternoon, the National News Agency reported a “series” of Syrian air strikes on “positions of gunmen along the Lebanese-Syrian border.”

Such developments would in fact be consistent with an assertion by the mayor of the nearby town of Labwe last Wednesday that the Lebanese army, Hezbollah and the Syrian regime would soon commence a joint “operation” to “put an end to terrorism along the border.” If so, the political consequences of such open cooperation between the Lebanese army and these controversial, polarizing actors could be far-reaching.

“If Arsal is being bombed by the Lebanese army, this is a problem,” said Abu Muhammad.

“And if it is being bombed by Hezbollah while the Lebanese army is doing nothing about it, this is a bigger problem.”

*NB: Citing fears for his and his family’s security, the source asked to be referred to by a pseudonym.

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

Arsal on a knife-edge

[Originally posted at NOW]

As Syrians flee new regime airstrikes, Arsal residents fear they may be next.

A girl from Qalamoun who arrived in Wadi Hmayed within the last week (NOW/Alex Rowell)

WADI HMAYED, Lebanon – High up in the rocky, khaki moonscape of the Anti-Lebanon mountains, to the east of the border town of Arsal, stands an army checkpoint that marks the de facto limit of the Lebanese state’s sovereignty. Beyond it lie a series of barren valleys that form a kind of lawless no-man’s-land, technically Lebanese soil but effectively annexed to the Syrian war zone, where regime air strikes, rebel rocket launches, and mutual ambushes and kidnappings happen on a regular basis. Because the Lebanese army itself has no presence in Wadi Hmayed, as the area is known, access is forbidden without special permission, and most international organizations, including the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), do not operate here.

And yet it is here that the bulk of the more than 10,000 new refugee arrivals from the adjacent Qalamoun region of Syria have settled in the past week, fleeing the intense bombardment of the nearby city of Yabrud to a few collections of tents erected by independent NGOs. They’re among the most vulnerable refugees in the country – none has registered with UNHCR so far, and many say they don’t want to – but, having made it out of Qalamoun, most said they were just grateful to be alive when NOW visited one of the camp sites Friday afternoon.

“Praise be to God,” said a remarkably cheerful old man, squatting on the gravel outside his tent, his six children and grandchildren sitting on slender mattresses inside. “We have everything we need here.”

“I haven’t showered since I arrived four days ago, and I have nothing but the clothes on my back, but praise be to God, we’re all happy here,” said a grinning adolescent at a second tent.

Asked what compelled them to leave Yabrud in the last week, they described scenes of immense and indiscriminate bombardment by the Syrian air force.

“The airplanes were bombing our houses, what else could we do?” said one young man, as a crowd gathered outside his tent. “We have kids they killed there. I saw a tank run over a six-year-old boy. And all the time they were dropping barrel bombs. There are still many people buried under the rubble.”

“Initially the regime said they were targeting ‘terrorists’,” said another young man. “But they killed more civilians than fighters.”

Although from Wadi Hmayed they are still close enough to Qalamoun to see the fighter jets on occasion, the refugees said they had no plans to move further inside Lebanon. Some, indeed, were not aware it was even an option – the old man, for instance, was surprised when NOW suggested he could relocate to the Beqaa Valley. As for registering with UNHCR, they were generally divided between those who didn’t know how to and those who didn’t want to.

“Where’s Zahle?” asked a young man unsarcastically, when NOW inquired whether he would be traveling to the UNHCR registration center there (the nearest one to Arsal). The ones who did know where Zahle was were often unwilling, however, to make the trip, fearing harassment or worse at the numerous army and Hezbollah checkpoints on the road from Arsal (NOW was stopped and searched on the return journey by the army, the army intelligence unit, and Hezbollah gunmen). Unless and until they register, they will have to make do with the basic aid UNHCR is able to provide them via its independent NGO partners, as well as what those NGOs themselves can offer. UNHCR spokesperson Joelle Eid told NOW this pre-registration aid includes hygiene and baby kits, stoves, blankets, fuel vouchers, food supplies, and medical assistance where needed.

Arsal in the crosshairs?

Back on the other side of the army checkpoint, in Arsal itself the tension sparked by recent events is palpable. It is this town, after all, that Hezbollah accuses of being the gateway through which car bombs, allegedly rigged in Syria, make their way inside Lebanon, where seven have exploded since the start of 2014 alone. Indeed, just 10 days ago, the army intercepted an explosives-laden car on its way out of Arsal.

For residents here, such accusations are part of a longstanding campaign to target the town for supporting the Syrian opposition. Last month, a rocket attack on the town center killed eight people, including six children, and though a claim of responsibility by the Syrian jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham group surfaced online, Arsal residents issued a statement pointing the finger at Hezbollah.

“We are being punished, because from day one we were the first to support the Syrian revolution, and to treat the Syrian wounded, and receive refugees,” the town’s Deputy Mayor Ahmad Fleeti tells NOW in his office, looking drained as he drags on a cigarette.

Asked about reports that Arsal’s outskirts, including Wadi Hmayed, could be the Syrian regime’s next target should it succeed in Yabrud, Fleeti shifts nervously in his seat.

“If there’s anything we fear, it’s regime airstrikes. We’re not afraid of Hezbollah, because we think they’re smarter than to invade Arsal. If Hezbollah invades Arsal, it will be a civil war for sure, so it’s more convenient for them to let Syria do the work. Yes, who knows, maybe the regime will do in Arsal what it’s doing in Syria.”

One of Arsal’s biggest problems, Fleeti argues, is its negative media image as a hostile “terrorist” hub, which has increasingly turned public opinion against it since the recent wave of car bombings began.

“We’re not takfiris here, we’re Lebanese, and we want to be under the state’s authority,” he tells NOW. “Arsal’s residents are paying with their own blood for all these explosions. Look at Abdallah Izz al-Din, who was an innocent victim killed in the most recent Bir Hassan bombs, and at first they suspected he was the suicide bomber because it can’t be that someone from Arsal is a victim.”

Nevertheless, the more than two years of brutal warfare in Syria have undoubtedly drawn a minority of Arsal’s more than 80,000 residents (some 60% of whom are now Syrians) in the direction of militant fundamentalist ideology. Black-and-white banners bearing Islamist calligraphy decorate the back windows of several cars cruising through the cramped streets. A number of men, especially the youth, groom their facial hair in the Salafist style. And in the tents in Wadi Hmayed, one refugee scarcely out of his teens gave an ominous reply when asked what would happen if the regime succeeded in its Yabrud offensive.

“If the regime wins, all of us young men will go and join the jihad.”

Some names have been withheld at the interviewees’ requests.

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.