Syrian refugees: ‘We had to throw anything into the heater to burn. The shoes were good’

Last winter, Ali Mohamed Al-Shella, his wife Arkan Jassem Al-Khalaf and their six children sat cross-legged on cushions, huddled around a stove in the rudimentary shelter they call home.

Temperatures dropped to minus 4 degrees in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Snow coated the ground and the roof above them. The Syrian refugees’ shelter, which is constructed largely of tarpaulin and wood, did little to shield them from the harsh winter conditions.

Unable to afford enough diesel to make it through the winter, they burned their own clothes, shoes, rubbish and anything else they could find in a bid to stay warm.

“We reached a point where we had to throw anything into the heater to burn to create some heat. The shoes were good,” Ms al-Khalaf says through a translator. “The shoes last and make it warm.”

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The family fled the civil war in their home country of Syria almost 10 years ago, and they have lived in an informal tented settlement in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, known as camp 012, ever since.

It is difficult, the family says, particularly for the young children. Their youngest child, Mohamed, who is four, has nowhere to play, other than with the sand and dirt outside.

This winter, however, things are expected to worsen. Hyperinflation and the energy crisis mean the cost of diesel is now completely beyond their reach, while climate change causes colder winters and hotter summers.

In previous years, the family purchased three barrels of diesel for the winter, totalling $300. Now, one barrel alone costs $240 (€228).

“Now we have nothing left to burn. It’s all gone. We can’t buy anymore diesel or wood. If we make it through the winter this year, we will thank God. We don’t know if we’ll be able to,” the family says.

Lebanon is experiencing an economic crisis, with 80 per cent of the population considered poor and the Lebanese pound losing 95 per cent of its value in the last three years, according to the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

Syrian refugees are not allowed to work in most industries, except for agriculture, cleaning and construction. As a result, many are largely reliant on support they receive from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

However, a text in Arabic – seen by The Irish Times – was sent to some refugees in recent weeks indicating that the cash assistance will stop in January due to a need to “prioritise” resources and families, according to a translation by a local interpreter.

A spokesman for the UNHCR in Ireland did not say how many families would no longer receive this payment but said it was a “routine exercise” that takes place every year.

“Due to unavailability of funds to provide cash assistance to all refugees in Lebanon, UNHCR and partners have to prioritise those families who are the most vulnerable,” he said.

Fares Fares, Lebanon programme manager at Sawa, an NGO supported by Trócaire that works within the settlements, says things have deteriorated in recent years, particularly since the Beirut port explosion in August 2020.

According to Fares, there are two yearly challenges for refugees: ensuring the tarpaulin survives the extreme weather without leaks or collapsing; and trying to stay warm enough during the depths of winter. Temperatures can go as low as minus 10 degrees, while up to 10cm of snow can accumulate.

“Each year, the diesel price in Lebanon increases. Since the Beirut explosion and even before, the economic situation in Lebanon is very bad and prices keep increasing,” he says.

“At the same time that the price increases, we don’t have the diesel. They [sellers] take it to Syria to sell it there, to get more money, because it’s more expensive in Syria. This is very hard for both the Lebanese people and the Syrian refugees.”

Samah Ghamrawi, Trócaire’s project manager in Beirut, says last winter was challenging, as the informal settlements are located in the coldest areas of Lebanon, and a number of people froze to death.

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“Fuel and heating material are sharply increasing day after day, and the costs have become extremely unaffordable to the refugee community,” she says.

Some 1.5 million of Lebanon’s estimated population of six million are Syrian refugees, though well under one million are registered with the UNHCR.

Last month, the Lebanese government began to send Syrian refugees back home, in a process security officials describe as voluntary.

However, families and NGOs say the Lebanese security forces are making things difficult for refugees by, for example, preventing them from receiving donations from NGOs and removing televisions, in an attempt to encourage them to leave.

A spokesman for the ambassador’s office at the Embassy of Lebanon in London said such claims were “totally unfounded” and the country was fully abiding by its international obligations.

“Despite the mass influx of refugees amounting to one-third of the population, the Lebanese authorities have been facilitating international assistance and maintaining rule of law and order in the refugee camps. Any return to Syria is voluntary and in full respect of the non-refoulment principle,” the spokesman said.

In another camp in the Bekaa Valley, Al-rahme in Bar Elias, Amra Shehadeh Al-mhaymid (46) is still feeling the psychological effects of fleeing her home of Homs in 2013.

Her husband died from lung cancer, and the regime in Syria became so violent that she decided to illegally cross into Lebanon, taking cars and trucks and walking until she reached safety.

“It was a lot harder because my husband was dead. The biggest challenge is I am a woman playing the role of mother and father to my children,” she says.

“The financial situation, everything the kids need, the demands, everything is on my shoulders. We are being affected a lot by the financial crisis, we can’t even explain how much. Now, without the [UNHCR] funds, we are back to the unknown.”

Though all refugees are experiencing increasingly difficult living conditions, women and children are most vulnerable, according to Women Now, a grassroots feminist organisation supporting some 800 Syrian women and girls in Lebanon.

Josiane Khouly, protection officer at Women Now, says gender-based violence and sexual abuse is common for women, particularly widows, who are unable to pay rent for the tents in which they live.

“The ‘shawish’, leader of the camp, forces them to work in agriculture and sometimes prostitution, and the shawish takes the money,” she says.

“If they can’t pay rent, they are sometimes told they can either leave [the settlement] or work in prostitution.”

The shawish can traffic the women into other camps for prostitution, Khouly says, adding that girls as young as 10 or 11 – or at the age at which they begin their period – can also be exploited in this way.

This harassment and exploitation also extends to those refugees who have been fortunate to settle in dwellings other than tents, they say.

Ramia Lal-Sous arrived in Lebanon in 2016 with her three children. Her husband was arrested from their home in Daraya, Damascus in Syria in 2013, and it is believed he was tortured to death.

After fleeing her home, she lived in tented accommodation in a compound in Syria. When she moved to Lebanon she wanted to avoid repeating that situation. For the first seven months, she moved from house to house, and was sexually abused and harassed during this time.

Now, her two sons, who are aged 23 and 21, work so the family can stay in a house. The conditions, while better than a tented shelter, are still dangerous, with cracks throughout the walls, and concerns around its ability to remain standing.

“I attempted suicide twice. When they know I don’t have a man, they want something in return. I’ve experienced sexual harassment, blackmail, sexual abuse,” she says.

The hardest part, she says, is seeing the impact the trauma has had on her daughter Miliza, who is 13.

“Everything happened in front of her eyes. She is wondering ‘what am I waiting for? I’m going to be just like you when I grow up’,” she says, meaning vulnerable to abuse.

“She [her daughter] wants us all to try and leave together illegally and die together. She said she does not want to be here. She wants to die altogether since there is no point to living. For her, death is even better than living.”