Living in constant fear of deportation
Just before Khaled returned to hell, he was out and about on his motorbike. Just like every day, he'd been driving around the neighbourhood delivering kaak, the crispy Arab street bread strewn with sesame seeds. He'd distributed it all and was heading home. He never got there.
Khaled comes from the Syrian city of Aleppo. When war broke out in 2012, he fled with his wife and seven children to Lebanon. In a tent settlement close to the city of Bar Elias in the Beqaa Valley, he established a new life. He found work and built a modest home for his family, a shack made of huge tarpaulins. From the shack, Khaled can see the mountains, beyond which lies Syria. It's just a few kilometres to the border. "It was never easy in Lebanon," says Khaled. "But we felt half-way secure." Until that Friday in April.
Khaled is 50 years old. He is dressed in jeans, a light-coloured shirt and a beige gilet. Khaled isn't his real name. To protect him and his family, we won't use his real name or show images of him. He starts to falter when he speaks of how the Lebanese army arrested him and brought him to Syria, and how he had to flee from there back to Lebanon. "It was a traumatic experience," says Khaled.
Taken to the Syrian border in an army truck
In recent years, Lebanese authorities have repeatedly deported individual Syrian refugees. But a few months ago, they started deporting people en masse. Soldiers arrest people at checkpoints or in raids on city neighbourhoods and tent camps and take them to the Syrian border. There, they hand the refugees over to Syrian security forces.
It is difficult to ascertain precisely how many people have been taken back to Syria this year so far. A Human Rights Watch report claims that between April and May alone, the Lebanese army deported thousands of Syrians, including children, to Syria. Although deportations aren't currently taking place on the same scale as they were earlier in the year, many Syrians here live in constant fear that they could share the same fate as their relatives, friends and neighbours.
Khaled knows what a deportation to Syria entails. He was stopped at a checkpoint. Lebanese soldiers detained him there for several hours, along with an increasing number of other Syrians. Then they drove Khaled and the others in an army truck to the Syrian border. "They didn't tell us why they were holding us or where they were taking us," says Khaled. They were taken directly to a section of the Syrian border where they were received by a small group of men.
Khaled doesn't know who these men were, but there are indications that they were members of the Fourth Division of the Syrian army, an elite unit controlled by the brother of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad that is thought to have killed thousands of people in Syria.
Khaled says that while still at the border, the men took him to a building and locked him in a room. "There were hundreds of people there," says Khaled. "It was so full that we had to squat down close together." He says that the men took away some of the Syrians arrested with him at the checkpoint. "I don't know what happened to them," says Khaled. "I never saw them again."
Stranded in Damascus
After three days, Khaled was picked up and taken by bus to Damascus. Khaled doesn't know why he was brought there. After all, he's from Aleppo. The driver dropped him off somewhere in the city. "There I was in the middle of Damascus with nothing," says Khaled. "No money, no accommodation, no idea what I should do." All he had was his mobile phone. He called his wife and then contacted an acquaintance in Damascus. "I was able to stay with him," says Khaled. "But I was very frightened."
Khaled says he's never been politically active. But the Assad regime doesn't just take a brutal line against political opponents. People who fled Syria are viewed as traitors by the regime and face draconian punishments. All Khaled wanted to do was return to Lebanon. And a few days later, that's just what he did.
Khaled doesn't want to divulge how he managed to cross the border. Human rights organisations say that many deported Syrians pay smugglers who take them out of Syria and back to Lebanon for several hundred dollars, and that members of the Fourth Division appear to be involved in the trafficking of human beings.
Khaled was lucky: on the Lebanese side, a motorcyclist picked him up and brought him home. "My family was relieved that I got back safely," says Khaled. Nevertheless, this experience marked a turning point in his fortunes. Not just because he had to leave his motorbike behind at the checkpoint. Without his motorbike, Khaled can't sell kaak. Two of his sons now go to work and keep the family's head above water. But also because he's afraid that the army could deport him once again. "Syria is not safe," says Khaled.
Syrians no longer feel welcome
All Syrian refugees are at risk of deportation, particularly those with no legal residence status – and there are many of them. Lebanon, with its population of around five million, has taken in some two million Syrian refugees since the start of the civil war. But fewer than 800,000 Syrians are registered with the UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency.
Syrian refugees in #Lebanon face deportation on questionable grounds as campaigns are increasingly led by the Lebanese army & local-level security actors—including #Hezbollahhttps://t.co/KDy4G87U9D
— ETANA (@ETANA_Syria) October 1, 2023
There's a reason for that: until early 2015, Syrians fleeing the war could enter Lebanon without a visa. The Lebanese government then froze registrations and imposed strict conditions on the renewal of residence papers. Since then, many refugees have no valid documentation, which means they are unable to move around freely and have restricted access to education and health care.
In the meantime, the oppressive conditions are affecting all refugees. There's no official refugee camp, because the government doesn't want refugees from Syria to remain indefinitely – like the Palestinian refugees who've been in Lebanon for decades. Many Syrians live in informal tent camps along the Syrian border, in abandoned buildings or on the street. Most are barely able to make ends meet.
And they're feeling increasingly unwelcome. Many Syrians have experienced heightened hostility in recent times. They say many Lebanese make it blatantly clear that they'd like to see the back of the Syrians. The worse things get in Lebanon, they add, the worse the country treats its guests.
Lebanon is disintegrating
And Lebanon is faring very badly. The economy has collapsed and the currency has depreciated. The state is bankrupt and barely able to import any goods. There are regular power cuts. There's hardly any fuel; many shops are shut. With every day that passes, Lebanon disintegrates a little more. The responsibility for the crisis is borne by a political class that has for decades lined its own pockets instead of governing properly.
But many Lebanese aren't just furious about the unbridled cronyism that has plunged Lebanon into the abyss. They also blame the Syrian refugees. This aversion to Syrians is nothing new: Syrian troops occupied Lebanon from 1976 to 2005 and many Lebanese look back on this time with unease.
The old hatred has been stirred up by the presence of so many refugees in Lebanon, and the mood is increasingly volatile: Syrians are being insulted and beaten, in some regions they are forced to abide by strict curfews. At protest rallies, radical groups call on the authorities to expel all Syrians.
Resentment is stoked by the religious and political elite. Clerics and politicians assert that the refugees are using up resources and bleeding the country dry. The interior ministry has banned local authorities from renting apartments to non-registered Syrian refugees.
For those affected, this populist rabble-rousing is having dramatic consequences. Many Syrians live under the permanent shadow of possible deportation. Khaled's stomach now turns whenever he sees a Lebanese army checkpoint. Others rarely leave home for fear of neighbours reporting them to the authorities. Research for this article shows the extent of the fear: few people are willing to speak to journalists; several arranged interviews were called off at the last minute.
Returnees are punished and tortured
This sense of vulnerability among many Syrians is also strong due to Arab states' rapprochement with Assad. Early this year, Arab nations reinstated Syria's membership of the Arab League after 12 years. The West is still reluctant to approach Assad, but many Syrians are afraid that this could change.
Ultimately, many western governments also want rid of Syrian refugees, and closing ranks with Assad could be the first step. Syrians fear that deportations such as those taking place in Lebanon could soon become the norm.
The Lebanese army is basing its actions on a government regulation that stipulates that Syrians who entered the country without papers after April 2019 can be taken back to Syria, by force if necessary. But the deportations violate the UN Convention against Torture and the principle of non-refoulement.
This principle states that people should not be sent back to nations where they face the threat of torture or persecution. Human rights organisations say Syrians can expect precisely that in their home country.
"Local and international organisations continue to document the Syrian military and security forces' horrific treatment of Syrian returnees, including children, such as unlawful and arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, rape and sexual violence and enforced disappearance," writes Amnesty International in a report.
Anyone asking around in the Syrian community in Lebanon will hear these claims confirmed. Refugees report that upon arrival in Syria, their relatives were drafted into military service or arrested by the secret service, that while in detention, they were beaten and tortured with electric shocks. Others say there is no trace of their relatives whatsoever.
Disappeared in Syria
This is the experience of 18-year-old Maryam (not her real name). In 2014, Maryam and her parents fled to Lebanon from the Syrian province of Idlib. In Lebanon, she met her husband, who also comes from Idlib. A few months ago, members of the Lebanese army suddenly showed up at the couple's apartment.
It was 3 a.m. when the soldiers hammered on Maryam's door. "I didn't know what was going on," says Maryam, "but I was absolutely terrified." The soldiers rummaged through Maryam's clothes and ordered her husband to come with them. According to Maryam, the soldiers took all the Syrian men from the apartment block that night. The raid went on until dawn. Word was that the soldiers were taking the men to Syria.
To this day, Maryam hasn't seen her husband again. "He wasn't allowed to take his mobile phone," she says. "Since that night, I haven't even heard his voice." Maryam doesn't know where her husband is. She says that shortly after the raid, she received a call. The voice said: "Your husband is in prison in Syria." Then the person hung up. "That's all I know," says Maryam.
Maryam was nine months pregnant when her husband was taken away. She says she's struggling to raise the child alone. Without her husband, who provided for the family, she has no income.
She's back living with her parents, she says, who are themselves struggling to survive. She hasn't been able to produce any milk because of the stress and has no money to buy baby formula. "My baby is crying out with hunger," says Maryam. "But I've nothing to give him." She prays that one day, her husband will return. "God help me to get through all this," she says.
© Qantara.de 2023
Translated from the German by Nina Coon