Almost everything
about my work is different from what I expected but maybe that is usually the
case when it comes to starting a new job.
One factor that has shifted greatly is that when I arrived to Lebanon,
my focus was on Iraqi refugees. However,
many things have changed, personally, work-related and of course, externally,
the situation in the Middle East is changing every day. Everyone is talking about Syria. On the news and in the office at work. The discussion of refugees in Lebanon has
suddenly shifted, after almost a decade, from the Iraqis to the Syrians, those
Syrians who have already arrived and even more so, towards those who might
arrive in the future.
The UN has
estimated the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon to be around 8,000, though
the number seems that it might be a bit exaggerated and no one can know the
exact number for sure. Unlike the Iraqis,
most of the Syrian refugees who have come to Lebanon have family and friends
who they are living with in Northern Lebanon or other areas. For this reason, the relief agencies in
Lebanon are not feeling the full “weight” of this problem yet. However, the biggest fear, and what the
Lebanese government and relief agencies are preparing for, is the possibility
that the situation in Syria will escalate, possibly into a civil war.
Each person
should read the news and try to come to his own conclusions or opinions about
the situation, but from what I have read and learned through discussions with
people who have family in Syria and are traveling back and forth between Syria
and Lebanon, the situation in Syria is worse than what it appears to be in the
news. As always, the innocent people
suffer, fleeing their homes in Homs to
live in the surrounding farms and gardens, killed at random by snipers, caught
in the crossfire…
Of course,
Assad’s army is stronger than the “Free Syrian Army” and could crush it if that
were the command, however, Assad is watching his steps, in order to avoid a
certain reaction from the international community. I wonder how long he will wait to give that command
and if the opposition will be crushed before a civil war breaks out across the
country. Kuwait announced that it will
support the “Free Syrian Army” by providing them with weapons and if this
happens, if the “Free Syrian Army” is able to grow from a mere gang of army
defectors (as they have been called) to an army with sufficient numbers and
weapons, then a civil war will break out.
Syria and its neighbors may suffer beyond what we can now imagine.
This situation is
further confused by two factors, first, that it is impossible, in this
circumstance, to rightfully determine who the “good guys” and “bad guys”
are. How many human beings have been
killed, imprisoned and tortured throughout the decades of the Assad regime’s
military dictatorship? How many Lebanese
has the Assad regime thrown into prisons, stealing their given names and
identities and replacing them with numbers?
Yet, the reality is that most people, at least those who I have spoken
with, are desperate for Assad to take control of the situation and remain in
power. Why? Because they fear that unknown entity that
might arise in the overwhelming absence of a regime that has controlled Syria
for decades.
This brings me to
the second factor which makes understanding and knowing how to intervene in the
situation, from an international perspective, very difficult. No one knows who the “Free Syrian Army” is. Many, maybe most of its members, could be
defectors from the official Syrian army.
Or, they could be any person, from any city or village, from any
religious sect or ethnic group, who has grown angry at the regime and seen his
chance to grab on to something that might make a difference. Or, they could be Islamists. The recent bombings in Damascus suggest that
Al Qaeda could be active in Syria. Even
if Al Qaeda is active in Syria, does that mean that it is a part of the “Free
Syrian Army” or is it a separate entity?
Who gets to decide who is in and who is out? Who is organizing and controlling the “Free
Syrian Army” or is there any organization, control and central leadership at
all?
The fact is that no one knows who
the “Free Syrian Army” is and even amongst those who consider themselves to be
in, there may exist differing and separate agendas and beliefs. So how can the United States, Russia, the
United Nations, Kuwait or any other entity intervene positively in a situation
it does not understand and support, even arm, a militant group whose face and
agenda it does not know?
