The world’s most unlikely safe haven
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. To grasp how bad things are in Lebanon, consider that Syria—where war and tyranny created the world’s largest refugee crisis—now seems like a safe haven. Since September around 500,000 people have fled Israel’s invasion of their country for the war-torn and fragmented ex-state next door.
Many have gone on foot, some clambering over craters created by Israeli airstrikes near the border crossings. Most are leaving the country because the Lebanese do not want to shelter them. More than two-thirds are returning Syrian refugees.
The rest are almost all Lebanese Shia who hope Syria’s leader, who himself belongs to a splinter Shia sect, the Alawites, will be more welcoming than Lebanon’s rival sects. The meagre savings they have, following the collapse of the Lebanese currency, go further in destitute Syria, too. Some 16.7m Syrians rely on aid, according to the United Nations.
There is a lack of basic services, but UN agencies hand out food, and rents are very cheap. Such is the influx that house prices and rents are climbing in the country for the first time in a decade. Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator, has long relished the chance to replace the country’s Sunni majority—who abandoned the country’s cities in droves at the height of the civil war—with more pliant minorities.
His Alawite base makes up just 10% or so of the population. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Shias are a welcome addition. Many have sought shelter near Syria’s Shia shrines, like Sayida Zeinab on the southern edge of Damascus.
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