BAR ELIAS, Lebanon (AP) – Mohammed Zakaria has lived in a plastic tent in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon for nearly as long as war has raged in his native Syria.
He and his family fled bombings in 2012, believing it would be a short, temporary stay. His hometown of Homs was under siege and subjected to a savage Syrian military campaign. He hadn’t even brought his ID.
Almost 10 years later, the family has still not returned. 53-year-old Zakaria is one of millions of Syrians who are unlikely to return in the foreseeable future, even though they face deteriorating living conditions abroad. In addition to his displacement, Zakaria is now struggling to survive Lebanon’s financial crisis and social implosion
“We assumed we would come in and out,” said Zakaria, who recently sat outside his tent on a cold day while his children walked around in worn slippers.
Syria has been embroiled in civil war since 2011, when Syrians rose up against President Bashar Assad amid a wave of uprisings in the Arab Spring. The protests in Syria, which began in March of that year, quickly turned into an uprising – and ultimately an outright civil war – in response to a brutal military crackdown by Assad’s security apparatus.
Nearly half a million people have died and about 12,000 children have died or were injured in the conflict over the past decade, according to the UN children’s agency UNICEF. The conflict also sparked the greatest displacement crisis since World War II.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said this week that since the start of the war in 2011, an estimated 2.4 million people have been displaced each year in and outside Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians face constant displacement with each year that the conflict continues and the economic conditions deteriorate.
The war has divided Syria and left it in ruins. Nearly a million children were born in exile.
Of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million, nearly 5.6 million are refugees living in neighboring countries and Europe. About 6.5 million people have been displaced in Syria, most of them for more than five years.
Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country of about 5 million inhabitants, is home to the highest concentration of refugees per capita, estimated at around 1 million. Most of them live in informal makeshift tent colonies scattered across Lebanon’s Bekaa, not far from the Syrian border.
Zakaria, a former porter of a construction company in Homs, is struggling to provide for his family, even though it continues to grow in Lebanon. He has two wives and eight children, including two who were born in Lebanon. One of his children was only a year old when the family escaped from Syria.
It is difficult to find jobs in Lebanon as an economic and financial crisis is sweeping the country. Financial aid is scarce and irregular. A currency crash caused inflation and prices to soar. Zakaria is now trying to make ends meet by selling gas bottles used for stoves to other refugees in his settlement.
He earns 1,000 Lebanese pounds (about 10 cents) from every gas cylinder he sells. But this winter, his neighbors in the settlement, home to about 200 Syrian refugee families, could barely afford to buy enough gas to heat their tents.
Due to the unprecedented economic crisis, the Lebanese currency has lost more than 80% of its value so far.
“Life is expensive here,” he said. “It’s so expensive, even for drugs or doctors.”
When his wife needed urgent eye surgery, Zakariya arranged for her to be briefly smuggled back to Syria to have the surgery there. The operation would cost 22 million Lebanese pounds – about $ 2,200 at the current market price. They managed to do it in Syria for 85,000 Lebanese pounds ($ 850).
Zakaria said he feels a lot of grief for his younger three children who have no memories of Syria and their home in Homs. They have not been to school and cannot read or write.
Nearly 750,000 Syrian children in neighboring countries, including Lebanon, are out of school, according to UNICEF.
“All our memories are gone now,” Zakaria said, hopping around and watching his children run. Two dirty street cats serve as their playmates.
“Now we have a generation – 10-year-olds are a new generation,” he said. “I have young children and … they don’t even know our neighbors” at home.
Many Syrians are unable to return because their homes were destroyed in the fighting, or because they fear military service or retaliation from government forces.
Zakaria clings to the hope that one day he would return to his home.
“God willing, we will die in our country,” he said. “Everyone should die in their own country.”