2023-05-14 13:17:41
- Carine Torbey
- BBC News Arabic
Raghad can only talk to his parents by phone since they were deported to Syria.
A certain apprehension reigned in the car as we crossed the mountains of Lebanon to reach the house of Raghad’s aunt. Talking to a little girl who has just been separated from her family and does not know when she will see her again is a very delicate task.
But as soon as we saw her, our anxiety eased. Raghad wore light-colored clothes and his hair was tied in a ponytail. She gave us an effortless smile and her eyes lit up. His calm reassured us.
Raghad barely spoke, so his uncle told us what had happened to him and his family. The girl listened attentively. The only time she stepped in was to correct him when he said she was seven and she insisted she was eight. A light debate ensued. A fun moment in a dark story.
Raghad now lives in a different country from his parents and has never had the opportunity to say goodbye to them. On April 19, just two days before Eid, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, the Lebanese army burst into Raghad’s home.
Raghad shows BBC journalist Carine Torbey the phone she uses to talk to her father.
His parents’ documents had expired. Without any notice, they were all arrested and then deported to Syria. “They told us to get dressed and take all the valuables we had,” her father told us over the phone.
It was around nine in the morning and Raghad was at school. His father told us that he had begged the army to let them wait for his return, but that they had refused. Raghad came home from school and knocked on the door, but no one answered. She burst into tears.
“I was very scared,” she says. A neighbor called his aunt, who lives nearby, and rushed over. Raghad now lives with her. The expulsion of Raghad’s family is part of a crackdown by the army against Syrians living illegally in the country.
His family has lived in Lebanon for 12 years, since the start of the conflict in Syria. Raghad was born in Lebanon, but her family hails from Idlib in northwestern Syria, a key location in the war and the last stronghold of rebel forces.
“Imagine that you have been living in a country for 12 years and you are driven out like this. We cannot return to our city because of the situation there,” says Raghad’s father, whose identity we are protecting. For safety reasons.
Raghad’s family is staying with friends in the Syrian capital, Damascus. I asked the family if they were trying to take Raghad to Syria, but they told me they would rather go back to Lebanon. It won’t be easy.
Anti-Syrian sentiment
Lebanese authorities, backed by what appears to be rising anti-Syrian sentiment across the country, say they want the refugees to return home.
A large number of Syrian refugees live in informal settlements scattered throughout Lebanon.
Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees in the world relative to the size of its population. About 800,000 Syrians are registered with the United Nations, but Lebanese authorities estimate the actual number of refugees to be more than twice that figure.
Over the past decade, the country has repeatedly seen waves of anti-Syrian sentiment and tougher laws and regulations affecting them. But this time the debate looks different and there seems to be a broad consensus to send them home.
The Lebanese say they can no longer bear the burden of caring for so many refugees as they face one of the most severe financial and economic crises in recent history. They claim that Syrian refugees are making the situation worse by competing with them for scarce resources and services.
They also accuse them of being the source of an increase in crime and of threatening a delicate demographic balance. The high birth rates of Syrians are often highlighted in contrast to the low birth rates of the Lebanese to support this narrative.
The outcry prompted some local authorities to toughen the rules for Syrians. The city of Bikfaya, in the mountains above Beirut, imposed a curfew on them. “No one in the world welcomed the Syrians like we did,” said Nicole Gemayel, the city’s mayor, in defense of a policy that rights groups call racist.
Proponents of the plan also point to the security situation in Syria, where there are no longer major military clashes. This situation is linked to political overtures towards the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is no longer considered a pariah by many governments in the region.
The mayor of Bikfaya, Nicole Gemayel, defends the curfew imposed on Syrians in her city.
The Lebanese authorities believe that all these factors should put an end to the refugee crisis. They also point to what they describe as “illegal movements” across the border.
According to them, this “trafficking” undermines the argument of Syrians that they fear for their lives in their country of origin. For its part, the army claims that it is only following the rules when deporting Syrians.
Some prominent political voices in Lebanon also accuse foreign countries and international aid organizations of trying to keep Syrians in Lebanon, saying the aid provided by the UN incentivizes them to stay. The United Nations denies these accusations and says that any return of refugees must be voluntary.
But for little Raghad, this debate is of no importance. She misses her parents and wants to go home with them.
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