George has come to Lebanon with his family fleeing the violence that has spread since 2013 across the Assyrian villages located on the banks of Khabur River in the Syrian Governorate of Al-Hasakah.
George said that at the time, he was working in Iraq, but with the entry of the organization of the Islamic State (ISIS) into his village and the proliferation of kidnapping and destruction of Christian religious symbols and other acts of violence, he left with his wife and three daughters to the city of Hasakah for a while, before deciding to definitively get out of Syria and head to Lebanon in mid-2015.
He continued by saying that the main challenges he faces in Lebanon are financial hardships and providing a decent life for himself and his family, especially after they had lost everything they had in Syria and had to begin their new lives from scratch in a country dubbed expensive, as he put it.
© Alia Haju
Bourj Hammoud is considered one of the most mixed-population areas, where an Armenian majority lives side by side with other denominations, in addition to large numbers of Syrians who arrived following the Syrian crisis in 2011. It is also home to a number of workers from Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt and Asian nationalities.
«The view of Syrian refugees is an all-encompassing view by the host community, and the Syrian is Syrian whatever his religion,» thus George described the situation of Syrian refugees in Lebanon with their various denominations and ethnicities. But at the same time, he spoke of some privileges and support that he received through associations and churches, in addition to obtaining a job as an English language teacher at a nearby school. This is what helps him get by while he waits for the day to come when he emigrates to Canada.
It is worth noting that the number of Assyrians who have arrived in Lebanon since the beginning of the Syrian crisis is 1,300 households, according to statements by the acting head of the Assyrian Church in Lebanon, Chorbishop Yatron Koliana, before many of them leave to Australia, Canada and Europe.
The country of minorities receives even more minorities
The Syrians of Assyrian ethnicity were not alone in their plight of seeking asylum in the countries neighboring Syria and the world.
Tens of thousands of Kurds, Armenians, Syriac Christians and other diverse ethnic minorities were forced to flee the violence and the new realities imposed on their towns and villages.
Johnny Azara, a young Syrian Syriac Christian who fled to Lebanon in 2014, said: «The bomb attacks that took place near my house in the city of Al-Qamishli, the incident of my son being kidnapped for hours, and the fear and horror that we experienced, made us take the decision of fleeing to a safer place.»
Johnny lives with his wife and eight-year-old son in the Nabaa neighborhood part of the Municipality of Bourj Hammoud, which is a neighborhood with a mixed population that includes Lebanese of different denominations in addition to Syrian and Iraqi refugees, and a number of African and Asian workers.
«There’s not much work, rents are expensive, and there are a few problems here... I’m not at ease psychologically here, but we’re getting by» with these words Johnny summed up his living conditions in Lebanon. Johnny did not receive any kind of support from civil society organizations or churches, and his requests for admitting his son to a free of charge school were unsuccessful, according to him.
He went on to say that some of the major difficulties that he was currently facing were not enjoying any legal residency documents, especially following the tough measures imposed by the Lebanese authorities on Syrians in 2015, which now require a Lebanese sponsor in addition to annual fees for renewal of the residency permit costing more than USD 200. This limits his mobility and puts him in danger of arrest and exploitation by employers in the event he does find a job.
Assyrians and Syriac refugees are concentrated in «the Assyrian neighborhood» in Sid El-Bauchrieh, Sabtieh, Ashrafieh and others.
The Armenians of Syria and a new exodus
It can be said that the situation of refugees from Syrian religious and ethnic minorities are to a large extent similar to those of the other Syrian refugees.
However, some of the minorities present within the fabric of the Lebanese society are trying to support and assist their kin arriving from Syria through some NGOs and other civil society activities. In other cases, refugees are being embraced in host communities of common descent.
This applies to the Armenian refugees from Syria who were originally displaced to Syria from their lands by Ottoman authorities, roughly a hundred years ago, and are today experiencing a second exodus to Lebanon as a result of the conflict in Syria.
Tony, a young Armenian who came from Sulaymaniyah district in the city of Aleppo in 2013, said that the factor of common language and culture had made it easy for him to integrate and deal with his new environment in Bourj Hammoud. He added that his relatives had been met with the same good treatment in Anjar, a town with an Armenian majority in the Beqaa Governorate in Lebanon.
The number of Armenians who fled to Lebanon since the beginning of the Syrian crisis is estimated at 10,000 refugees, according to informed sources. About 40% of them have left to Europe, Canada and Australia, while others have preferred to return to their motherland Armenia. It is noteworthy that most of them came from the city of Aleppo in addition to groups that had arrived from Homs, Syrian coastal cities and villages on the Syrian-Turkish border.
As for their locations in Lebanon, they are distributed like other Syrian refugees in various Lebanese regions, while large numbers of them are concentrated in Bourj Hammoud district and towns of North Metn.
Other Syrian components have passed by here or still remain
Before 2011, Syrian Kurds used to make up an important part of the Syrian labor in Lebanon, especially in the field of business and the liberal professions.
With the expansion of the Syrian crisis and the intensification of fighting in Kurdish areas between the Kurdish People’s Protection Units and ISIS, many of them were forced to seek refuge in the Kurdish areas in Iraq. In addition, tens of thousands have crossed the border into Lebanon.
Sabah talked about her memories in the city of Aleppo with heartbreak: «We used to live in safety and planned for a beautiful future for our children, and suddenly everything was lost… May God curse the one behind this.»
Sabah had grown up in one of the Kurdish villages along the Turkish-Syrian border and then moved with her husband to Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood in Aleppo. With the battles between the different parties of the Syrian conflict reaching the city, they ended up being refugees in Lebanon.
Sabah said, «Syrian Kurds manage their affairs on their own, we do not feel that we are very welcome amongst the Kurds of Lebanon,» and added that they did not receive any support from local Kurdish bodies, except for some aid that they used to receive occasionally through UNHCR.
Sabah counts her days waiting for the completion of «family reunification» paperwork by her husband, who had left Lebanon nearly a year and a half ago seeking asylum in Germany.
The locations of Kurdish refugees are concentrated in the areas of Bourj Hammoud, Nabaa, and Bourj El-Barajneh camp, and the rest of the families are distributed among other areas.
Figures and Statistics
The latest UNHCR reports indicate that there are about 1.1 million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon, while official sources say that there are more than 1.5 million refugees.
According to a source familiar with the Syrian refugee dossier in the municipality of Bourj Hammoud, it is difficult to know the accurate figures of Syrian minorities present in Lebanon, as some of them are well-off or have ties to Lebanese families that host them, so they do not ask for relief or register with UNHCR or civil society organizations. Others entered illegally, and others were still present in Lebanon before the start of the Syrian crisis in search of work opportunities. In addition, many families and individuals are leaving to settle in foreign countries and, consequently, the figures are in a state flux.
Refugees, but only for a while
Many of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Syria’s neighboring countries seek to travel to more developed and stable countries to start a new life and build a better future, away from the situation in Syria and the pressures they face in the neighboring countries.
Turkey was the main crossing gateway for all those dreaming of reaching the European continent via illegal ways.
The chances of Syrian refugees in Lebanon of traveling to Turkey, a transit country to the old continent, have shrunk after the Turkish government issued in 2015 a series of decisions limiting the Syrians’ ability to travel to it without obtaining a visa through the embassy, which often rejects applications. So now the only chance for immigration is through submitting a formal application through the embassies of the foreign countries of their destination or through UNHCR, which helps resettle a certain number of refugees registered with it every year, in coordination with the countries that will receive them.
In our discussion of Syrian ethnic minorities in Lebanon, it should be noted that some have privileges over the rest of their countrymen in their chances of obtaining formal immigration approval.
An owner of one of the offices that provide services to submit and follow-up on immigration applications for Syrian refugees said that chances of applications by Christians getting approved are higher than those for the rest of the communities, whereby obtaining a «baptism certificate» from the church and attaching it to the immigration application has become necessary to boost chances of being accepted.
He went on to say that most of the applications were currently being submitted to Australia and Canada, and that Assyrians and Syriac Christians are the most likely to obtain approval.