BEKAA VALLEY: The soldiers came before daybreak, singling out the Syrian men without residence permits from the tattered camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. As toddlers wailed around them, Mona, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon for a decade, watched Lebanese troops shuffle her brother onto a truck headed for the Syrian border.
Thirteen years since Syria’s conflict broke out, Lebanon remains home to the largest refugee population per capita in the world: roughly 1.5 million Syrians — half of whom are refugees formally registered with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR — in a country of approximately 4 million Lebanese.
They are among some five million Syrian refugees who spilled out of Syria into neighboring countries, while millions more are displaced within Syria. Donor countries in Brussels this week pledged fewer funds in Syria aid than last year.
With Lebanon struggling to cope with an economic meltdown that has crushed livelihoods and most public services, its chronically underfunded security forces and typically divided politicians now agree on one thing: Syrians must be sent home.
Employers have been urged to stop hiring Syrians for menial jobs. Municipalities have issued new curfews and have even evicted Syrian tenants, two humanitarian sources told Reuters. At least one township in northern Lebanon has shuttered an informal camp, sending Syrians scattering, the sources said.
Lebanese security forces issued a new directive this month shrinking the number of categories through which Syrians can apply for residency — frightening many who would no longer qualify for legal status and now face possible deportation.
Lebanon has organized voluntary returns for Syrians, through which 300 traveled home in May. But more than 400 have also been summarily deported by the Lebanese army, two humanitarian sources told Reuters, caught in camp raids or at checkpoints set up to identify Syrians without legal residency.
They are automatically driven across the border, refugees and humanitarian workers say, fueling concerns about rights violations, forced military conscription or arbitrary detention.
Mona, who asked to change her name in fear of Lebanese authorities, said her brother was told to register with Syria’s army reserves upon his entry. Fearing a similar fate, the rest of the camp’s men no longer venture out.
“None of the men can pick up their kids from school, or go to the market to get things for the house. They can’t go to any government institutions, or hospital, or court,” Mona said.
She must now care for her brother’s children, who were not deported, through an informal job she has at a nearby factory. She works at night to evade checkpoints along her commute.
’Wrong $ not sustainable’
Lebanon has deported refugees in the past, and political parties have long insisted parts of Syria are safe enough for large-scale refugee returns.
But in April, the killing of a local Lebanese party official blamed on Syrians touched off a concentrated campaign of anti-refugee sentiment.
Hate speech flourished online, with more than 50 percent of the online conversation about refugees in Lebanon focused on deporting them and another 20 percent referring to Syrians as an “existential threat,” said Lebanese research firm InflueAnswers.
The tensions have extended to international institutions. Lebanon’s foreign minister has pressured UNHCR’s representative to rescind a request to halt the new restrictions and lawmakers slammed a one billion euro aid package from the European Union as a “bribe” to keep hosting refugees.
“This money that the EU is sending to the Syrians, let them send it to Syria,” said Roy Hadchiti, a media representative for the Free Patriotic Movement, speaking at an anti-refugee rally organized by the conservative Christian party.
He, like a growing number of Lebanese, complained that Syrian refugees received more aid than desperate Lebanese. “Go see them in the camps — they have solar panels, while Lebanese can’t even afford a private generator subscription,” he said.
The UN still considers Syria unsafe for large-scale returns and said rising anti-refugee rhetoric is alarming.
“I am very concerned because it can result in... forced returns, which are both wrong and not sustainable,” UNHCR head Filippo Grandi told Reuters.
“I understand the frustrations in host countries — but please don’t fuel it further.”
Zeina, a Syrian refugee who also asked her name be changed, said her husband’s deportation last month left her with no work or legal status in an increasingly hostile Lebanese town.
Returning has its own dangers: her children were born in Lebanon and do not have Syrian ID cards, and her home in Homs province remains in ruins since a 2012 government strike that forced her to flee.
“Even now, when I think of those days, and I think of my parents or anyone else going back, they can’t. The house is flattened. What kind of return is that?” she said.
Syrians in Lebanon fear unprecedented restrictions, deportations
https://arab.news/cs2mk
Syrians in Lebanon fear unprecedented restrictions, deportations
- Lebanon remains home to the largest refugee population per capita in the world: roughly 1.5 million Syrians
- Five million Syrian refugees who spilled out of Syria into neighboring countries, while millions more are displaced within Syria
Historic decree seeks to end decades of marginalization of Syria’s Kurds
DAMASCUS/RIYADH: A decree issued by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa on Friday marks a historic end to decades of marginalization of Syria’s Kurdish minority and seeks to open a new chapter based on equality and full citizenship in post-liberation Syria.
The presidential action, officially known as Decree No. 13, affirms that Syrian Kurds are an integral part of the national fabric and that their cultural and linguistic identity constitutes an inseparable element of Syria’s inclusive, diverse, and unified national identity.
Al-Sharaa’s move seeks to address the consequences of outdated policies that distorted social bonds and divided citizens.
The decree for the first time grants Kurdish Syrians rights, including recognition of Kurdish identity as part of Syria’s national fabric. It designates Kurdish as a national language alongside Arabic and allows schools to teach it.
Al-Sharaa’s decree came after fierce clashes that broke out last week in the northern city of Aleppo, leaving at least 23 people dead, according to Syria’s health ministry, and forced more than 150,000 to flee the two Kurdish-run pockets of the city. The clashes ended after Kurdish fighters withdrew.
The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), that controls the country’s northeast, have engaged in months of talks last year to integrate Kurdish-run military and civilian bodies into Syrian state institutions by the end of 2025, but there has been little progress.
The end of an era of exclusion
For more than half a century, Kurds in Syria were subjected to systematic discriminatory policies, most notably following the 1962 census in Hasakah Governorate, which stripped thousands of citizens of their nationality and deprived them of their most basic civil and political rights.
These policies intensified after the now-dissolved Baath Party seized power in 1963, particularly following the 1970 coup led by criminal Hafez al-Assad, entrenching a state of legal and cultural exclusion that persisted for 54 years.
With the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, Syrian Kurds actively participated alongside other segments of society. However, the ousted regime exploited certain separatist parties, supplying them with weapons and support in an attempt to sow discord and fragment national unity.
Following victory and liberation, the state moved to correct this course by inviting the Kurdish community to fully integrate into state institutions. This approach was reflected in the signing of the “March 10 Agreement,” which marked an initial milestone on the path toward restoring rights and building a new Syria for all its citizens.
Addressing a sensitive issue through a national approach
Decree No. 13 offers a balanced legal and political response to one of the most sensitive issues in modern Syrian history. It not only restores rights long denied, but also redefines the relationship between the state and its Kurdish citizens, transforming it from one rooted in exclusion to one based on citizenship and partnership.
The decree shifts the Kurdish issue from a framework of conflict to a constitutional and legal context that guarantees meaningful participation without undermining the unity or territorial integrity of the state. It affirms that addressing the legitimate demands of certain segments strengthens, rather than weakens, the state by fostering equal citizenship, respecting cultural diversity, and embracing participatory governance within a single, centralized state.
Core provisions that restore dignity
The decree commits the state to protecting cultural and linguistic diversity, guaranteeing Kurdish citizens the right to preserve their heritage, develop their arts, and promote their mother tongue within the framework of national sovereignty. It recognizes the Kurdish language as a national language and permits its teaching in public and private schools in areas with significant Kurdish populations, either as an elective subject or as part of cultural and educational activities.
It also abolishes all laws and exceptional measures resulting from the 1962 Hasakah census, grants Syrian nationality to citizens of Kurdish origin residing in Syria, including those previously unregistered, and guarantees full equality in rights and duties. In recognition of its national symbolism as a celebration of renewal and fraternity, the decree designates Nowruz Day (21 March) as a paid official holiday throughout the Syrian Arab Republic.
A call for unity and participation
In a speech following the issuance of the decree, President Ahmad al-Sharaa addressed the Kurdish community, urging them not to be drawn into narratives of division and calling on them to return safely to full participation in building a single homeland that embraces all its people. He emphasized that Syria’s future will be built through cooperation and solidarity, not through division or isolation.
The decree presents a pioneering national model for engaging with diversity, grounded not in narrow identities but in inclusive citizenship, justice, and coexistence. The decree lays the foundations for a unified and strong Syria that respects all its components and safeguards its unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.
