The Stream Of Syrian Refugees Strains Lebanon

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Um Ahmed holds her infant daughter outside a United Nations registration center for Syrian refugees in Al Mina, a northern Lebanese city near the Syrian border. She is among a group of dozens of Syrians, waiting for their names to be called.

Um Ahmed tries to coax her screaming infant daughter to take a bottle. The baby is hot — the slight brown curls of her hair are matted to her head with sweat, and the bottle offers no comfort. She keeps crying. She’s been here before.

“The first time I came they didn’t accept us,” Um Ahmed says. “They told us I need documents.”

Um Ahmed doesn’t have documents. She says it was impossible to get them before she left Syria. Now in Lebanon, she says she has to beg for transportation money just to get to the registration center.

The center itself sits about a quarter of a mile behind a large black metal gate, patrolled by U.N. workers. Um Ahmed flags down a woman wearing a blue U.N. vest. Between the gate’s bars, she explains she missed her latest appointment to register because her child was sick.

Syrians fleeing their country register with U.N. centers like this one in Al Mina, Lebanon, in order to receive monetary assistance for food and rent, medical care and items like blankets, mattresses and basic kitchen kits.
Syrians fleeing their country register with U.N. centers like this one in Al Mina, Lebanon, in order to receive monetary assistance for food and rent, medical care and items like blankets, mattresses and basic kitchen kits.
The woman tells her she’ll have to wait another month and a half for a new appointment.

“If we let anyone pass without an appointment everyone will expect to,” the U.N. employee explains.

Um Ahmed tries to object, gesturing to her crying infant. It doesn’t work.

The Syrian conflict has now entered its third year with no end in sight. The Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition group, elected their first prime minister on Monday, a Syrian-American named Ghassan Hitto. In his first press conference as leader of the interim government in Istanbul Tuesday, Hitto said creating a stable environment for Syrian refugees to move back to their homes will be a priority.

Still, the numbers are staggering — and still growing.

More than 8,000 Syrians cross the border into neighboring countries each day. Lebanon has the biggest urban refugee population in the region, and the highest number of unregistered Syrians, a total of nearly 400,000.

The U.N. says employees are working double shifts in its registration centers and they are actively recruiting more, but Syrians who cross into Lebanon can still expect to wait at least 4 months before receiving help.

Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, says he hopes the backup will be reduced by June.

Lebanon’s population has grown by 10 percent since the influx of Syrians began, and Lebanese are growing frustrated with the strain. On a visit to Lebanon last week, Guterres publicly praised the country for keeping its borders open.

“Can you imagine what would be the tragedy in Syria if the neighboring countries close the borders?” Guterres said. “We are already witnessing tens of thousands of people killed.”

Inside another registration center in northern Lebanon, dozens of families sit in rows of blue chairs, waiting, again, for their names to be called. It is calmer inside, and not as hot.

A couple sitting in the back of the room, each holding a blonde, curly haired toddler, identify themselves as Um and Abu Ahmed, common names in Syria. They fled the northern city of Aleppo a month ago without a plan.

“There was a lot of shelling.” Um Ahmed says. “I wasn’t thinking. I was just thinking of my children.”

Photo: Um Ahmed, her husband Abu Ahmed, and their two children sit inside a United Nations refugee registration center in Tripoli, Lebanon. They fled the northern Syrian city of Aleppo a month ago. “There was a lot of shelling,” said Um Ahmed, “I wasn’t thinking, I was just thinking of my children.”

NPR

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6 responses to “The Stream Of Syrian Refugees Strains Lebanon”

  1. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    Al Mina … El Mina … IT IS TRIPOLI !! (And some maps say Tarabulus)
    Some Tripolians are in the same boat, and you can begin to hear the grumbles that ‘only Syrians get help’.
    Actually true – if you don’t work for a ‘sect’.
    The UN people need to be ‘hard’ … and it hurts them as well. Most people have hearts … after all.
    Employment drops … and ‘alone’ women are worse off than most … and feel it most when the guns and RPGs sound at night, or the crowds of idiots ‘grasping-for-answers’ gathers to chant and listen to the rhetoric which accomplishes nothing.
    Many are Grasping for food – or clothes … it’s what people do for their children. And all become dehumanized in it. People fight for life … as they are able. Some lose.
    Most don’t worry about shells landing in a field. Some stop worrying about them falling on their heads too … it would be faster than starvation, and better than listening to the wailing children … but the waiting is hard.
    The only way to feel slightly good in all of it, is to consider what it is like in some parts of Syria.
    Small comfort ….

  2. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    Al Mina … El Mina … IT IS TRIPOLI !! (And some maps say Tarabulus)
    Some Tripolians are in the same boat, and you can begin to hear the grumbles that ‘only Syrians get help’.
    Actually true – if you don’t work for a ‘sect’.
    The UN people need to be ‘hard’ … and it hurts them as well. Most people have hearts … after all.
    Employment drops … and ‘alone’ women are worse off than most … and feel it most when the guns and RPGs sound at night, or the crowds of idiots ‘grasping-for-answers’ gathers to chant and listen to the rhetoric which accomplishes nothing.
    Many are Grasping for food – or clothes … it’s what people do for their children. And all become dehumanized in it. People fight for life … as they are able. Some lose.
    Most don’t worry about shells landing in a field. Some stop worrying about them falling on their heads too … it would be faster than starvation, and better than listening to the wailing children … but the waiting is hard.
    The only way to feel slightly good in all of it, is to consider what it is like in some parts of Syria.
    Small comfort ….

  3. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    When each ‘side’ brings their wounded to a hospital and then start shooting at each other there, you know the refugee problem is at the bottom of a list ….

  4. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    When each ‘side’ brings their wounded to a hospital and then start shooting at each other there, you know the refugee problem is at the bottom of a list ….

  5. The Destroyer has lit a fire on the earth, and violence and destruction will increase more and more, until the Prince of Peace returns………..

    ……Revelation 12:12………. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.”.

  6. Crossroads Avatar
    Crossroads

    The Destroyer has lit a fire on the earth, and violence and destruction will increase more and more, until the Prince of Peace returns………..

    ……Revelation 12:12………. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.”.

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