Syria: A Country Betraying Its People

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net
Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

“The Lebanese Army said they were terrorists and burned down the camp but the terrorists are those inside Syria.”

Chiefly from Aleppo, the 300 or so families in Kabb Elias consider their camp to be the best they can make of family life while fierce government bombardment of their city this week claimed further civilian lives. In the five years since the conflict began the camp has come to seem less transient. Heavy duty vinyl sheeting used in billboard advertising is fixed to wooden frames on a concrete base to make a ‘chalet’ – the old term ‘tent’ conjuring images of canvas or modern camping structures that have nothing to do with these small homes. Non rigid side-flaps can be opened for ventilation, with netting across the ‘window’ space. Some homes have regular wooden doors.

Families rent the land on which the camps are erected. Sewage pipes are going down in some places. Wells have been sunk with small pumps to pipe up water. WCs à la Turka are set in the ground and the ‘bathroom’ curtained or partitioned off from the main living space. Some such facilities lack a roof and remain open to the sky depending on what a family can afford. The refugees have to pay for everything themselves – rent, electricity, daily necessities, food and medical treatment.

Hussain Ahmad is nine years old but appears small for his age. Skin cancer has cleft his nose. In Aleppo he was receiving low dose chemotherapy but in the three years since arriving in Kabb Elias camp he has not received any treatment. Although his mother works two six-hour shifts in the fields everyday picking the fresh bean crop, all the family can afford is food and the basics of survival. Hussain’s mother worries about her son. She is sad because other children have started to tease her son about his nose and he has begun fighting them back, sometimes violently in sheer frustration. The kids don’t understand what is cancer. A sponsor must be found to pay for Hussein to be seen by a Beirut specialist Beirut, two hours by car across the Lebanon mountain range. Then he could start treatment again. The Lebanese doctors and hospitals do not treat Syrians gratis. We must find him the help he needs¹.

Rurup (‘sunset’) is seventeen-years-old and was an excellent student. She longs to continue her education but there is nothing in the camp. Two of her brothers were kidnapped in Syria: the ICRC has not been able to locate them. A third brother was forcibly recruited into the Syrian Army but at least is still in contact. Rurup’s mother begins weeping into the tails of her head scarf, anxious for her missing sons. Are they in prison? Are they dead?

Programme Manager, Nibal Salloum from the Nuon Organization for Peace Building² consoles the remaining family not to lose hope. She takes down details of the lost sons. If they had been in prison, treated in hospital, or reported killed, surely the ICRC or the London-based Syrian Human Rights Observatory³ would have a record of their names? Nibal says she will check the lists.

At least 1.1 million Syrians are currently living in Lebanon, waiting for the conflict to end, to go home, to start over. Meanwhile the cities and the refugee camps are home, increasingly less transient.

In Al Jarrahiya Camp near the large town of Chtaura a few spare trees have been planted along the main path and stone chippings have been laid over the soil tracks between the chalets, the latrines better situated, and some women adding decorative touches to their kitchens with plastic lace part screening neatly-ranged plates, pots and pans on makeshift shelves, but kept immaculately clean.

The women dress just as brightly as they did at home. Indeed, they are mostly wearing the dresses they left Aleppo with but the holes are getting bigger. Some of the little girls have been treated to new, princess-like dresses, widely popular in their culture, if the family can afford it. Females, netherless, have housework to get on with and girls have younger siblings to look after. Many children have been born here.

Syrians, Syrian Palestinians and Syrian Kurds all live together here in Kabb Elias and Al Jarrahiya as they did before without discrimination. This is a good sign for the future.

The men appear more frustrated. Any health problem or physical disability makes finding work impossible. Women may then bear the brunt of male frustration. Several wives have suffered being beaten by husbands or adult sons as their emotions spill over. But by and large it is the strength of the family and determination to survive that imbues camp life with its dignity and its happier moments. The children play cheerfully enough like children everywhere – an earth mound becomes a sledding slope, there is a game board, a soccer ball. The chalets mostly have an old TV and a small satellite dish so there are programmes to watch – and the bad news of home.

Lebanese resentment

The residents of Al Jarrahiya camp also experienced a more recent misfortune after the Lebanese Army vented its frustration upon them and torched their simple tents in 2014.The people rebuilt their shelters at their own expense. Businesses donated the vinyl sheeting imprinted with old ads but the refugees had to pay for the wood to remake the frames on which to stretch and cut the sheets. It was a senseless act against people who had already lost so much.⁴ The soldiers claimed the camp was home to terrorists. Ayshe (not her real name) observed “The Lebanese Army said we were terrorists and burned down the camp but the terrorists are those inside Syria.”⁵

Many Lebanese resent the dramatic Syrian influx that swells the population and the unemployment figures. They readily succumb to the popular complaint that their economy is being destroyed by the Syrians although the Syrian families have to pay for almost everything themselves as well as taking on the work their Lebanese counterparts are unwilling to perform themselves. This is now “home” after all and children laugh and smile even though the eyes of some may tell of darker things.

Today’s ten-year-olds were just five when they ran away but old enough to remember the carnage and destruction. Some suffered injuries, some lost siblings or parents. But the survivors of catastrophic war know they are the fortunate minority and that they were somehow spared.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians⁶ have been killed, an overall estimate of some 400,000 people by April ⁷ alone and still the toll continues with a reported 500 casualties just in Aleppo over the past 45 days of continuous shelling.⁸

The minority that has reached Europe represent a handful in comparison to the high numbers of dispossessed Syrian families in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and those thousands of others still on the long road of broken dreams under a merciless sky.

Syrian Hospitality

In the Bekaa camps, the traditional Syrian hospitality reserved for guests is as manifest as it is heart-felt. Inside the chalets, thin, floral-printed mattresses serve as seating by day and beds at night just as in traditional village homes. Lebanese coffee is fresh made and served for us in tiny cups in front of the old TV, broadcasting a cartoon programme for the scores of kids.

When we leave the “house”, heading for the periphery of the camp compound little “Miss Vogue” runs up and poses for my camera, her headscarf with its tiny sparkles flashing in the sunlight as huge white clouds gather behind the mountains. She smiles, radiant. Then she waves farewell, disappearing down the rag-tag alleys of the camp, fleeting as a butterfly.

This is a girl whose country has betrayed her: President Bashar al-Assad, Russia, the USA, Europe and the plethora of warring Islamist factions are fighting for their own ends in a war where individual citizens are of no account.

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