Lebanon – Engaging Peace

Syrian Refugees and the Earth Household, Part 2.

Posted on April 21, 2016April 17, 2016 by kathiemm

Camp in Lebanon close to the Syrian border. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: Elgaard.

By Guest Author Dana Visalli

The second camp I visited in my visit to Lebanon was considered more hazardous than the first. It is much larger and has been in place longer; a raid there a year ago netted many guns. Some women will ‘trade sex for money’ at the camp—with both Lebanese and Syrian men attending the services.

Tarek and I never really quite obtained permission to enter the camp, so we spent our time standing on a road passing through it, talking with a gaggle of men and children that gathered around us until we were kicked out. There was general agreement among those gathered that the United States was behind the violence being perpetuated in Syria by the fundamentalist rebel groups, especially ISIS and Al Nusra. I asked them why the United States would want to destroy Syria, and an answer flew from the mouth of an old man almost before I finished the sentence: “Israel. Israel wants the Arab world broken up into small pieces,” he said, “and it wants to see the Arabs fighting against one another.” He probably had that about right; as I noted in a previous report, there is an Israeli action plan published in 1982 that calls for fragmenting the Arab world.

At just about that time, the Lebanese owner of the camp happened by. Upon learning that I was an American, and was there out of a sense of concern for the Syrian refugees, he said he had a story to tell me. It seems there was this very poor man, who complained to God about his poverty. God replied that he would give the man a donkey, a sheep and goat, and he could make a living with these animals. But soon the man was back, complaining that he couldn’t sleep at night, because the animals constantly made a racket. God advised him to get rid of the donkey and things would be better; but still the other animals were rambunctious and wouldn’t let the man sleep. So God advised him to get rid of the goat, and then to get rid of the sheep; then at last the man could sleep and he was happy; he had completely forgotten about the original complaint that had initiated the cycle of emotions.

“And you Americans,” said the owner, “are like this poor man. You create this enormous problem out of your own unhappiness, destroying the country of Syria with your weapons and ignorance and maliciousness, driving the Syrian people out of their homes. And then afterwards you look upon the results and ask with feeling, “My God what happened here, this is a terrible situation, how can I help.”

To take in the magnitude of this human diaspora, one has to take the story of any one refugee individual or family, and multiply that by the 12 million Syrian refugees that currently exist, or for full effect multiply by the 60 million people on the planet today who have been driven out of their homes, by far the majority of them by violence.

The impoverishment of these people’s lives is analogous to the impoverishment of the global biosphere that is currently taking place on the planet, with the widespread loss of plant and animal populations and species. Anyone willing to take this all in will see clearly that the human species is challenged to change behaviors and strive to learn what it means to live ecologically balanced lives. I find such an inquiry extends from where I get my food to whether I am willing to pay for a nation’s nuclear arsenal. It is a personal journey for each individual.

Dana Visalli

Charre, Lebanon

Dana Visalli is a biologist living in Washington State; he has visited Iraq and Afghanistan often and attempted to visit Damascus in Syria in March of this year. He has essays on Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam at www.methownaturalist.com

Syrian Refugees and the Earth Household, Part 1.

Posted on April 18, 2016April 17, 2016 by kathiemm

By Guest Author Dana Visalli

With a Lebanese population of four million, Lebanon is currently hosting over one million Syrian refugees from the violence in Syria that has torn that country apart. I wanted to touch in with the human stories of these people, and so I traveled to Lebanon in hopes of visiting one or more of the refugee camps that have sprung up all over the country.

Most of the camps are humble affairs, taking in from one hundred to one thousand people. The dwellings are typically tent-like structures with large tarps thrown over a wooden frame. Despite the fact that these camps now dot the Lebanese landscape, entry into them is both tightly controlled by the U.N. and not particular safe once you are allowed in, so it was my good fortune to visit two camps and be able to walk around and talk with some of the inhabitants (with the help of a translator).

Both camps that I visited were in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. The Al Jaraheya camp was a collection of about 30 wood-framed structures housing about 200 people. A dominant theme of the camp that comes to mind is emptiness. This small, lost world is not lacking in people, but it is empty of any social or cultural context or content. For example we took a tour inside one of the “homes”; there was almost nothing in it. There was a rug on the floor, a small stove (but no fuel) in the middle of an approximately 15 by 15 foot room, and a television; other than that it was just open space. An attached side lean-to had a simple sink, drainboard and a single-burner propane stove.

In a “community center” social area, there was just a small plastic table and four plastic chairs; nothing else. Four pepsis—which of course are devoid of any nutritional content—were brought and placed on the plastic table in this environment that was devoid of any cultural content. The devastation and the deprivation of any form of meaningful existence visited upon them in their home communities in Syria had followed them across the border to Lebanon. There is no work for these people, no books to read, no activities, just overwhelming emptiness in a sterile environment.

Abu Razak, young man of 25, has been in the camp for one and a half years. His village near Homs was razed to the ground by the Syrian government. People in his area were known to be critical of the Assad government; one of their major issues was the mass killing of perhaps 25,000 people in an uprising staged by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982.

People in the area where this violence took place were deeply traumatized by the event, but they had never been allowed to talk about it; if they did speak publicly, they would likely be arrested by government agents. Abu Razak said his people “were not even allowed to think” for fear of reprisals by the government. (On the other hand, education was free in Syria and Razak dropped out of school after the 8th grade, to his regret now). How was life in the camp? His answer was similar to others I asked, “We are alive thank God, but life in camp is hard.”

Young Selwa (she did not want to give me her name so I told her to just make one up; she laughed and said, ok, call me Selwa) has been in the camp for two and a half years; her home and entire village are also completely destroyed. Who destroyed it, the government or the rebels? She said the responsibility for the destruction was shared between the Assad government and the rebels. Both sides are constantly fighting, and the people are caught in the middle. She is 29 years old with two young children; her husband is stuck in Syria because currently no more Syrians are allowed to cross the border to Lebanon.

Surviving the economics of the camp is challenging. Most camps are on private land, and most landlords charge a month rent for each tent; at Al Jaraheya the rent is $50 a month per tent; multiply that by 30 tents and it seems the landlord is making a tidy sum off of the refugee’s misfortune. There are also charges for electricity and water. There is little work to be had for the refugees, but if the rent isn’t paid in a timely manner, tents and the people in them are removed from the camp. Each person in the camp gets a card for $27 worth of food a month; sometimes people sell this sparse supply of food in order to raise money to pay the rent.

My guide Tarek tells me afterwards that everyone in the camp is against the Syrian government. They are mostly from the poorer strata of Syrian society, who are the ones who often seemed to have felt most neglected by the government, while the more well-to-do people tend to support Assad (certainly not categorically true however).

Dana Visalli is a biologist living in Washington State; he has visited Iraq and Afghanistan often and attempted to visit Damascus in Syria in March of this year. He has essays on Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam at www.methownaturalist.com

Nothing but a euphemism (Imperialism still stinks, Part 3)

Posted on August 12, 2013August 11, 2013 by kathiemm

Third in a series by guest author Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

Image in public domain.

At the end of World War I in 1918, the Arab peoples (including Iraqis, Syrians, and Palestinians) triumphantly declared their liberation from colonial rule according to their pre-war agreements with the Allied powers. However, as a result of the Sykes-Picot pact, the Balfour Declaration, and the newly formed League of Nations, these lands remained under foreign control (albeit a different foreign power).

The League of Nations was created in 1919 for the purpose of preventing another world war. Even though one of its founding principles was the concept of national self-determination, the League rejected Arab declarations of sovereignty. Subsequently, at the 1920 Conference of San Remo[1], France obtained mandates over Syria and Lebanon, while the British gained Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq[2].

The “mandates” in the Arab World were commissions from the League of Nations that authorized France and Great Britain to govern over each region. From the British perspective, the mandates were distinct from the exploitative colonialism of the previous era because of the League’s requirement for a local constitutional government. The Crown considered the mandate concept as a transitional stage towards Arab autonomy, reflecting “the spirit of the age” of national independence[3].

For the indigenous peoples, however, the term “mandate” was nothing more than a euphemism for imperialism—and their continued subjugation.

The peoples’ anger spawned massive independence movements against their new rulers. They had bled and died fighting the Ottomans for their liberation. Through the mid- and later 20th century, they would fight the British, French, and other colonial powers who had betrayed them.

[1] Munier, Gilles. “Iraq: An Illustrated History and Guide.” Interlink Books, Northampton. 2004. p.32

[2] Owen, Roger. “State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 3^rd Edition.” Routledge, New York. 2004. p.6

[3] Ibid

Syria: Between a rock and a hard place

Posted on August 1, 2013August 19, 2013 by kathiemm

By guest author, Michael Corgan

Does the ongoing Syrian civil war have echoes of the Spanish civil war of nearly 80 years ago?

Unnamed grave with teddy bear for fallen children in Syria. Photo by Bernd Schwabe used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

If the conflict were only between the Syrian government and rebel forces (as was true in opposing Franco), then it would be easy for liberal or humanitarian interventionists to oppose what Assad has done to his people and support the rebellion. Indeed, many have already done so.

During the Spanish civil war, as far as outsiders were concerned, there were communists versus Nazis, and a choice was unappealing on those grounds. In Syria today, outsiders of equally unsavory character and practices are intervening for their own purposes, and that makes choosing sides problematic.

Hezbollah supports Assad and Al Qaeda has an increasing role in shaping rebel efforts. How can one aid either side without aiding those Shia and Sunni extremist militant groups so fond of terrorists tactics, and so responsible, in Syria as elsewhere, for the deaths of many innocent Muslims?

As far as outside interests go, you also have the U.S. trying to assert some role in the area versus Russia, which is loath to abandon a long-time client state and lose its only overseas base.

The biggest problem is for the neighboring outsiders. Turkey can probably handle the huge influx of refugees from the fighting, but Jordan is strained and poor fractured Lebanon could fall apart as enlivened Shia-Sunni fighting spills into its land.

There seems to be no workable ending in sight. Nor even a less deadly one. The best that the watching world can do now is to take care of the refugees whose numbers continually swell.