Hezbollah’s Gonna Hate This
In
a big reversal, the United Nations says it wants to open 12 refugee
camps in Lebanon for Syrian refugees. Jamie Dettmer reports on the
repercussions—and why Hezbollah is opposed.
Content Section
It’s About Time: United Nations Plans Refugee Camps for Syrians in Lebanon
In a big reversal, the United Nations says it wants to open 12 refugee camps in Lebanon for Syrian refugees. Jamie Dettmer reports on the repercussions—and why Hezbollah is opposed.
For
months the United Nations insisted it was in full accord with the
Lebanese government’s opposition to opening refugee camps in Lebanon for
the influx of an estimated 1 million refugees from war-torn Syria, but
in a dramatic and unadvertised reversal of policy, U.N. authorities are
now proposing establishing a dozen major camps—a move reflecting a
grimly deteriorating humanitarian crisis.
The
decision, which some veteran aid workers criticize as coming far too
late, will place the U.N. at serious odds with Lebanese political
leaders and especially the militant Shia movement Hezbollah, which is a
key ally for President Bashar al-Assad.
Hezbollah
has adamantly refused to accept the establishment of camps, fearing the
mainly anti-Assad Sunni Muslim refugees from Syria will remain
long-term. Just this month, Ninette Kelley, the UNHCR chief of mission
here, insisted that not building refugee camps was the right strategy
and argued Lebanon was “a model for dealing with refugees.”
But
that two-year-long approach is about to be abandoned for a 180-degree
reversal, exposing the U.N. to criticism that it misunderstood the scale
and nature of the crisis and compounded refugee suffering.
According
to documents leaked to The Daily Beast, the Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is planning a first camp
at Chaat in the northern Bekaa Valley, a majority Shiite Muslim area
“within Hezbollah’s area of influence.”
U.N.
officials note in the documents they still have to receive the sign-off
from the Lebanese government, but with the refugee crisis deepening and
the government desperate for aid, they seem hopeful a deal will be
reached. In a record-breaking $5.1 billion humanitarian appeal launched
this month by the U.N. for the Syrian crisis, the largest portion of
$1.2 billion is earmarked for Lebanon. How Hezbollah will react to the
opening of camps is unclear.
The
U.N. refugee agency hopes to follow up quickly with two more camps in
Hezbollah-dominated west Bekaa in the towns of Joub Janine and Tall
Znoub, and it wants to have eventually 12 camps able to shelter 100,000
refugees each, according to the U.N. documents and briefings by UNHCR
officials of aid agencies in Beirut. This would bring Lebanon in line
with the U.N.’s camp-based strategy in Jordan and Turkey. Six other
camps able to house 15,000 refugees are also being planned.
For
the past two years, an increasing number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon
have had to house themselves, and those registered with the U.N. have
been receiving only a meager allowance in the form of a $30 food voucher
per family member each month. Many have relied on rapidly depleting
savings or unpredictable help from irregularly funded private relief
organizations and poor local host communities.
With housing costs rising and Lebanese landlords profiteering, unofficial makeshift camps have sprung up in northern Lebanon
and in the Bekaa Valley. UNHCR has been quietly providing tents,
although refugees angry with the West for what they see as a lack of aid
often paint out the UNHCR logo, as a reporter for The Daily Beast
witnessed when visiting a makeshift camp of 70 refugees in the village
of Bar Elias in the Bekaa Valley.
Refugee Abed Razzak Khali, a 35-year-old father of two young children
who fled from the suburbs of Damascus, said he cannot understand why
his family is not getting more assistance. He gestured toward his
1-year-old daughter playing on her mother’s knee. “When it comes to me I
can be patient," he said. "I can wait. But this girl cannot wait for
food. OK, they bring us something, but what we need is much more. It is
very hard."
“The U.N. should have established camps two years ago—it never had the funding to deal with a huge dispersed refugee population. It got it wrong.”
Lebanese
families that once were charitable toward the Syrians are markedly
losing patience, fatigued by the refugees’ prolonged presence and
resentful of the fact that they represent competition for local jobs and
drain local coffers. In Shia areas the arrival of Syrian Sunnis is
greeted with unease. “We are going to start seeing violence soon between
host communities and refugees,” predicts the head of mission here of a
foreign-aid charity.
Many
aid workers are critical of the U.N.’s past failure to confront the
Lebanese government over the camps issue, saying that the dispersal of
refugee families with many led by widows and grandmothers has made them
more vulnerable, and has stretched the logistics of relief charities as
well as of the U.N.
“On
the record I will tell you the no-camps approach was the right one, and
it is true camps can be awful and they are demoralizing and I don’t
like advocating for them,” says a veteran aid worker. “However, if you
don’t have camps you then have to talk about increased resources to help
the targeting of refugees, and the support of them and ensuring a
balance is kept between what refugees are receiving and giving to poor
local communities to ensure they don’t feel discriminated against and
turn resentful.”
The
aid worker added: “The U.N. should have established camps two years
ago—it never had the funding to deal with a huge dispersed refugee
population. It got it wrong.”
Earlier
this month, Lebanese President Michel Sleiman argued that refugee camps
should be set up inside Syria under the protection of the U.N., and
Lebanese ministers hinted they might bar more refugees from entering the
country. The Lebanese government estimates there are 1 million refugees
in the country already, a figure most foreign-aid officials accept as
accurate, although the UNHCR has so far registered half a million.
Sleiman’s
proposal of refugee camps inside Syria could only work if the camps
were adequately protected, and that would likely require Western allies
putting boots on the ground and enforcing no-fly zones—unlikely at this
stage, especially with President Assad now on the offensive. Government
ministers have recently complained that Syrians should be shifted to
outside the country because “all of Lebanon has become a camp for foreigners.”
Last
month, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, reacted sharply
to a report from the influential Brussels-based International Crisis
Group urging the opening of camps because Lebanon was reaching a
breaking point and the dispersal of Syrian refugees is “fueling
pre-existing political, social, and communal tensions.”
The
Sheikh said that camps would pose a threat to Lebanon. “We cannot
accept refugee camps for Syrians in Lebanon because any camp will become
a military pocket that will be used as a launch pad against Syria and
then against Lebanon,” he said at a conference in Hezbollah’s southern suburbs of Beirut.
But
analysts here believe the biggest long-term fear for Hezbollah is that
camps would shift Lebanese demographics. Judging by the estimated
400,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, some who fled Palestine
at the establishment of Israel, camps would likely result in many Syrian
Sunni refugees remaining in Lebanon even after the civil war is
over—especially if Assad hangs on to power. Shiites would then become
significantly out-numbered by Sunnis in a political system that is based
on a delicate sectarian system introduced in 1990—at the end of a
savage 15-year-long civil war—which allocates guaranteed government
roles to the major sects.
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