THE SYRIAN REFUGEES IN BEKAA

This is the fourth and last article from my visit to Lebanon in late February 2019. This time I want to share my impressions from a visit to the Bekaa valley, an area where more than 340 000 Syrian refugees were living at the time of my visit. 

It´s the last week of my stay, and I have just left my friends in the Palestinian refugee camp Rashidieh in southern Lebanon, to join a group of young Palestinian volunteers on a relief supply mission to a Syrian refugee camp (or rather an informal settlement) in the Bekaa valley. As you may understand from reading my previous articles from Lebanon, my feelings after getting a glimpse into the daily life and struggles of the Palestinian refugees are quite mixed to say the least, but by the end of this day, I will experience conditions even worse. But I´ll start with a bit of context information...

The crisis in Syria is now in its eighth year. It has had an enormous negative impact to the whole region as millions of Syrian refugees have fled into the neighbouring countries. Lebanon has one of the highest per- capita ratios of registered refugees in the world. According to the revised Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (LCRP 2018), Lebanon has been hosting 1.5 million Syrians who have fled the conflict in Syria, as well as 34,000 Palestine refugees from Syria. The LCRP also states that: “more than 76 percent of displaced Syrians are living below the poverty line”. 

The number of Syrian refugees has dramatically increased the demand on infrastructure and social services. The basic infrastructure cannot keep up with the large demand, for example 64 percent of the population does not have access to safe drinking water services. Most Syrian refugees arrived with limited savings and struggle to earn steady incomes to meet their families’ basic needs, such as food, healthcare, and shelters. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) there is a large gap between the funding received and the money needed/applied to cope with the situation and providing safe water, shelter, food, education and health services to the refugees. In 2018, according to UNHCR the gap was $1.28 billion, or 48%. As a consequence the refugees are constantly facing insufficient supplies and services to cope with their daily needs.

Our small relief expedition leaves from Tyre at dawn in a rented, mid-size bus. At the arrival in Bekaa we will be joined by three trucks, with the supplies we are bringing to “our” Syrian families. Today's mission is funded by the“The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit”(GIZ).

The early morning traffic along the coastal highway towards Beirut is heavy as always, and it is almost noon when we leave the capital is behind us, and start climbing up the steep hillside of Mount Lebanon. The engine struggles to keep up speed, as we are constantly bypassed by smaller vehicles and their impatient drivers. The conversation with my travel companions is relaxed and hushed. Looking out of the bus window I cannot stop thinking about the last time I was driving on the same road in the middle of the night, more than 36 years ago in a Mercedes taxi, watching the lights from Israeli and Druse grenades passing over my head. In those days back in 1982 people fled to Syria. Now thousands are coming back.

As we are climbing higher and higher and passing more than a thousand meters above sea level, the temperature is dropping rapidly and the light rain turns to slay and snow. The mountains are covered by a white carpet, a cold, freezing winter landscape. I remember the news just a few weeks ago, when the whole area was hit by a heavy winter storm, threatening the lives of thousands of refugees in their flimsy tents. It´s early afternoon when the bus finally reaches our destination camp on the other side of the mountains, in middle of the Bekaa Valley. The location is still quite high and the temperature not more than two or three degrees centigrade.

The camp pointed out for our supplies, consists of approximately 60 families living in simple tents made of plastic tarpaulins and wooden planks. Some of the families have been living here since the beginning of the war in 2012. Seeing the tiny, flimsy shelters, feeling the cold wind and downpours coming and going it´s hard to understand how they can keep going under such conditions. A see old people and families with small children, not more than two, three years old. Some of them were maybe born here. For several months every winter they have to cope with weather like today. Between the tents the rain have made small lakes of water and turned the ground into mud, sticking to our shoes making them heavy as lead. The camp dwellers gather around the trucks to get their supplies. We are bringing diesel for the heaters, planks and new tarpaulins for the tents. I am told the people living here are so called unregistered refugees, in an informal camp getting no regular supplies or services from the UNHCR. The faces I see are and marked by the conditions, the hopelessness and the suffering. I see no smiles or here no laughter. Some young boys give us a friendly look and shows us around in the camp. Nobody wants to talk, and no tea invitations are received like I´m used to, even in slum-like neighbourhoods in the big cities.

We finish the supply distribution, and climb back into our comfortable, modern bus to cross the snowy Mount Lebanon once again. Along the Bekaa valley highway I see numerous camps like the one we just left. More than ever I think how incredible unfair life can be, and I´m feeling almost ashamed for leaving the camp, heading for my warm, friendly Beirut hotel for a few days before going back to Norway. I think about how easy it could be to offer these refugees far better conditions, some prefabricated houses, a small school building, decent toilets and showers and some paved walkways between the shelters as a start. But nobody seems to care enough to make this happen. Or maybe it´s politics again, like “if we offer them to much they will never leave”. The cost of warfare compared to what is spent on relief is totally disproportionate. The money the big game players are spending on relief is just a fraction of what is spent on soldiers, arms and warplanes. My homeland Norway is said to be the sixth biggest contributor to the refugee crisis in Lebanon, from which 40% goes to offer primary education for children. Not bad, but whatever numbers they can show, and with a state wallet containing billions of oil dollars, I am convinced a lot more could be done, if politicians really cared. 

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Some of the «relief expedition» team.