MOSCOW, December 28 (Mikhail Gusev, RIA Novosti) – “At first, the people were against corruption, but when the army opened fire on us, we turned against the regime,” says Hamed, one of thousands of refugees who have fled Syria’s civil war to neighboring Lebanon.
“I was on a demonstration and they shot at us. The bullet went right through me,” continues Amjad, 31, gesturing towards his stomach. “I was afraid to go to hospital, so three doctors and two nurses operated on me at home without proper medical equipment.”
Amjad, 31, is a father of three from the southwest Syrian town of Zabadani, just a 30-minute drive from the border with Lebanon. But with Syrian soldiers on the look-out for opponents of the regime, Amjad had little choice but to cross the mountains to safety. The journey took 13 hours. His children made the trip separately, with relatives.
He and his family have been using the money Amjad saved in Syria from what he describes as a “successful” business to rent an apartment – in reality little more than two concrete shells equipped with a stove – in the small Lebanese town of Bar-Elias.
“Assad attacked even those who loved and supported him,” Amjad continues.
But he shakes his head slowly when asked if he would be ready to take up arms against Assad’s forces. “I am against the regime,” he says. “But I have a family and I am against violence.”
Bar-Elias is home to many more refugees from the war in Syria and most cannot afford to rent apartments.
Children with filthy faces and ill-fitting clothes peek out of makeshift homes whose flimsy walls are covered with polythene sheets and rags to keep out the rain and cold of a Lebanese winter.
“We are only alive thanks to the help we have received from the locals,” said Anaam, 33, a mother of seven, whose husband is too ill to work.
“The children don’t go to school. We are often without electricity or water,” she continues, tearfully. “It’s unfair. We weren’t fighting anyone.”
Anaam says she left her hometown of Idlib, in northwestern Syria, after “tanks entered and they began shooting.”
“Shards of glass from the shooting injured my children and we had to leave the town,” Anaan says, tears in her eyes. “We fled straight to Lebanon.”
At the local mosque, refugees are waiting to register for foreign humanitarian aid. The authorities in Lebanon may have allowed refugees to enter the country, but they have offered very little in the way of support.
The refugees are angry at the presence of Russian journalists. Moscow has – along with China – refused to back UN sanctions against Damascus over what it calls the proposed resolutions’ pro-rebel bias. But the opposition accuses Russia of propping up Assad, and many refugees hold its leaders responsible for the violence which has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
But a mullah intervenes and eventually calms the crowd.
“It’s good that Russians at least want to find out what is really going on in Syria,” says Mullah Sheikh Qasem al-Jarrah. “We get help from some other countries, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But not Russia.”
He is unable to answer when asked why the Lebanese authorities do not do more to assist refugees.
There are some 10,000 Syrian refugees in the village of Arsal, some three hours by car from the capital, Beirut.
“We try to help them,” says the head of the town, Ali Mohammad al-Hojeir. “We have tried to house everyone – there are no camps here. Some people give them building materials and the refugees build themselves homes. Whoever can help does so.”
In a room furnished with mattresses and carpets, three women and two young girls sit around a rudimentary stove. All of them fled Syria after losing loved ones.
“I lost my husband,” says Nasira Zuhuri, 47, who fled the village of El-Kusair on the outskirts of Homs in western Syria. “Our house was destroyed. We were bombed and had to escape.”
“We are against the regime,” she shouts. “If they give us weapons, we are ready to fight against Assad’s army.”
Nearby, at the sandy foot of a hill, fifteen families have been given accommodation in basic apartments. Children jump up and down on two hubcaps and a woman steps out of the building at the sight of visitors to the area.
“We escaped through the mountains,” she says, too afraid to give her name. “My husband was injured and is recovering after his operation.”
“We have lost everything,” she adds. “We have nothing left in Syria.”
Men on motorcycles pull up, kicking up dust. One of them, a gray-haired man who gives his name as Abuiad, is initially aggressive when he hears the phrase “Russian journalists,” but quickly calms down.
Inside his house, he passes around photographs of his life back in Syria. In photos taken he says just two years ago, he is a dark-haired, healthy-looking young man. Today, he seems decades older.
“This is the only memory we have left of our homes and our loved ones,” he says. “We have no home left in Syria. Everything has been destroyed.”
