Photo via LA Times: Syrians who fled their homes due to fighting line up to collect water from a tanker early this month as they took refuge at the Bab Al-Salameh border crossing in hopes of entering one of the refugee camps in Turkey. Credit: Muhammed Muheisen / Associated Press
The consistently great International Crisis Group recently came out with a report on Syrian refugees in Lebanon. It’s not a hopeful picture:
Syria’s conflict is dragging down its neighbours, none more perilously than Lebanon. Beirut’s official policy of “dissociation” – seeking, by refraining from taking sides, to keep the war at arm’s length – is right in theory but increasingly dubious in practice. Porous boundaries, weapons smuggling, deepening involvement by anti-Syrian-regime Sunni Islamists on one side and the pro-regime Hizbollah on the other, and cross-border skirmishes, all atop a massive refugee inflow, implicate Lebanon ever more deeply in the conflict next door. It probably is unrealistic to expect Lebanese actors to take a step back; Syria’s fate, they feel, is their own, and stakes are too high for them to keep to the sidelines. But it ought not be unrealistic to expect them – and their international partners – to adopt a more forward-looking approach to a refugee crisis that risks tearing apart their own country’s economic, social and political fabric, igniting a new domestic conflict that a weak Lebanese state and volatile region can ill afford.
This is a story numbers tell best. Over one million Syrians are in Lebanon – registered and unregistered refugees, as well as migrant workers and others. That figure – more than 25 per cent as great as the approximately four-million citizen population million– is rising and likely will soar if and when the battle for Damascus is fully joined. It would be staggering anywhere but is truly frightening when one considers the state’s institutional frailty, meagre resources and, perhaps above all, highly sensitive sectarian balance. Unsurprisingly, the government – divided and polarised, on this issue as on most others – was slow off the mark.
The day-to-day impact is palpable. The demographic change can be felt in virtually all aspects of life, from the omnipresent Syrian dialect, to worsening traffic congestion, mounting housing prices and rising delinquency. Yet, the refugees do not pose a humanitarian problem alone. Their presence also has been politically deeply polarising. The vast majority are Sunnis who back the uprising. Most Lebanese view the conflict through a sectarian prism, and thus their attitude toward refugees from the outset has largely been informed by confessional considerations, as well as by their potential security impact and implications for future domestic politics.
Just stop and really think about those numbers for a second. More than 1 in 5 people in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee now. Try to imagine that. Also try to imagine a government that has a mixed set of competencies—some things they do well, and some things they really don’t—and the things they’re bad at are the things that need to be done to deal with the refugees. The organization that is good at this sort of service provision? Hizballah. They’re busy, and they’re on the Syrian regime’s side, anyway.
As I’ve said over and over, just about any war in this particular part of the Middle East turns into a proxy war sooner or later. Too many different countries—neighbors and patrons, mostly—as well as non-state actors like Hamas, Hizballah, Lebanon’s March 14 alliance, Sunni militias, etc.—have a stake in the outcome, and the involvement of so many countries makes everybody trigger-happy—the U.S. doesn’t want damage to Israel, Israel doesn’t want Iran to gain any influence, Iran doesn’t want the Sunnis to gain any ground, round and round and up and down.
Given all this, Lebanon has done well to remain as stable as it is so far, in my opinion. One reason for it is that their government is, as ICG says, incredibly slow. When you have your parliament specifically organized and sorted by religious affiliation in a country that had a decades-long civil war on the basis of religious affiliation, any and every disagreement in parliament becomes a potential sectarian crisis, which leads to paralysis. So they’ve done a pretty good job of doing nothing, which has worked okay so far.
However, it won’t work forever. This is what happened going into the Lebanese Civil War as well; as the dynamics leading into civil war grew worse, the government fretted and did nothing while the violence started, right up until the army fell apart and there was nothing they could do. The tensions back then (~1975) consisted of sectarian mistrust, a huge population of militarized Palestinian refugees drawing Israeli fire, and disagreements among Lebanese about whether and how to support the Palestinians.
You may notice a parallel here involving refugees, and you’d be right to. Look at the list of problems I just gave, and then look at this:
Refugees generally have moved to hospitable, predominantly Sunni areas. Even there, however, patience is beginning to wear thin. Hatred for the Syrian regime remains acute and tends to dominate other feelings. Still, there is growing anger at the fact that they are attracting Syrian fire by providing succour and cover to anti-regime rebels. Besides, a history of stereotypes is at play: as many Lebanese see them, Syrians fall into broad categories: low-income, poorly uneducated, menial workers, criminals or abusive security officers and soldiers. Complaints go both ways: from Lebanese who fault their guests for introducing greater insecurity, to Syrians who accuse Lebanese of disrespecting, exploiting or even assaulting them. Street fights and criminality have trended upwards.
Hostility and suspicion are far more discernible among Shiites and Christians. In predominantly Shiite areas now witnessing refugee arrivals, many local residents express concern that the numbers could grow, while Hizbollah fears that refugees’ anti-regime sentiment could be a prelude to activism against the movement itself. Many Christians feel even more vulnerable, alarmed at a demographic balance that continuously tilts against them. The current human wave harkens back to the community’s experience with Palestinian refugees whose initial, theoretically short-term resettlement turned into a massive, largely Sunni, long-lasting, militarised presence.And it feeds into a more general belief that Lebanon’s Sunni community – more specifically, Islamists in its midst – are being empowered, riding an irresistible regional tide.
Syria, you will not be surprised to learn, played an important role in Lebanon’s civil war. That’s one reason there’s so much anti-Syrian sentiment in some parts of Lebanon: even after the war officially ended, Syrian soldiers and influence remained a heavy presence in the country until the Hariri assassination in 2005. However, Syria was able to do this without falling apart itself; they played the part of a traditional player in a proxy war, which is to say they did their best to manipulate Lebanese players, and interfere in the action themselves, in order to protect their interests. Not simple, but pretty straightforward.
Lebanon is not going to be able to pull off a role reversal. The government doesn’t have the necessary cohesion and control. The army…is not an army anyone is worried about, let’s say. (Indeed, until recently Hizballah was more or less filling the role of national defense force (among other things), and I say “until recently” because now they’re pretty busy in Syria.) Lebanon’s fractured constituencies means Lebanon has fractured goals and interests; even if they could all get themselves together, they still want different things in Syria.
What this means is that rather than Lebanon becoming a player in Syria’s war, it’s almost certainly going to get sucked into it, with all the ugliness that entails. It also means, potentially, a second wave of refugees into and then out of Lebanon.
ICG has some excellent recommendations when it comes to what can be done to at least try to ease the strain resulting from the existing influx of refugees at the full report. Remember, if you want to help Syrians: the refugees outside the country need your help, too.
Fursa Sa'ida 