Akkar Between Two Refugee Movements
The phrase “shifting sands” could describe the current situation in Lebanon in general, and in Akkar Governorate in particular, following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria on 8 December 2024. Amidst expectations that the Syrian refugees who came to Lebanon when the Syrian crisis began in 2011 would now return, the region has found itself facing a complex map of displacement. There are approximately two million mostly Sunni refugees, many opposed to Asad’s rule, who began arriving in 2011. Following the regime’s collapse, an estimated 130,000 Shia Syrian refugees and Lebanese residents of Syria were displaced and arrived in Lebanon’s northeastern region of Baalbek-Hermel. Moreover, there are 2,500 displaced Lebanese families in Beirut, Jbeil, and Metn. Another 50,000 new Alawite refugees, both Syrian and Lebanese from Syria, were also displaced across 19 Alawite towns in Akkar.
Additionally, the towns of Qasr and Hawsh al-Sayyid Ali on the eastern border with Syria in Hermel District witnessed an internal displacement of women, children, and elderly, along with the Syrian refugees they were hosting in their homes. “The men stayed to defend their areas behind the Lebanese army”, citizens told the Legal Agenda. This displacement was prompted by the fierce bombardment that the area suffered after three personnel of one Syrian military agency were killed. After the residents of Hawsh al-Sayyid Ali left, forces that Syria TV reported are part of the Syrian army entered the town. These forces withdrew on March 19 after an agreement was reached between the Lebanese and Syrian sides, although not all the town’s residents have returned because some of the houses were vandalized or burned down.
At this tense stage along Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria, and amidst the dramatic changes, Akkar itself has not changed. The governorate received the most Syrians displaced by the former regime in 2011, taking in an estimated 300,000 refugees registered with the UNHCR or unregistered. It also opened its homes, places of worship, and municipal halls to people displaced by the Israeli aggression against Lebanon, who came to it from Southern Lebanon, Dahieh, and Beqaa. Today, it is doing the same for the new refugees from Syria. Akkar’s inhabitants, like the governorate itself, are keeping their doors and hearts open and sharing their bread with the people who have fled there, whatever their backgrounds, areas, and affiliations may be.
However, the beautiful image of solidarity in Akkar should not cause us to forget the reality that most of the initial, Sunni refugees (from 2011) are concentrated in Akkar’s Sunni towns while today’s Syrian Alawite refugees, along with the Lebanese Alawites from Syria, are mostly confined to the Alawite towns. Once the capacity of these towns was exhausted, new families seeking refuge spread across homes in Christian villages in Akkar, Koura, Mount Lebanon, and Chouf.
The Legal Agenda is presenting this investigation on “Akkar Between Two Refugee Movements” at a time when partisan voices – such as those of the Kataeb Party, the Lebanese Forces, and the Free Patriotic Movement (which presented a bill to deport Syrians in 2024) – are demanding that the Syrians be returned to Syria. These forces argue that Syrians no longer have any need for asylum now that the Assad regime has fallen, all while Akkar is witnessing a new wave of refugees.
We are investigating the new refugees’ situation and difficult conditions, as well as the pace at which refugees from 2011 are returning to Syria and the circumstances surrounding their return with regard to their homes, livelihoods, and living requirements. The UNHCR talks of a “modest” return of old Syrian refugees to their country, estimating – in response to our questions – that just 300,000 have returned from all of Lebanon since the regime’s fall.
Intersecting Stories of Pain
In 2011, when I was an investigative journalist with As-Safir, I covered the Syrian refugee movement to Lebanon. At that time, I encountered people fleeing from the hellish fighting in Syria on the border in Wadi Khaled, Jabal Akroum, and Abboudieh in Akkar and Masharee al-Qaa and Aarsal in Northern Beqaa.
When the regime recently fell, I conducted a joint investigation with Faten Allam into the Syrian and Lebanese refugees who fled from Sayyidah Zaynab, Homs, al-Qusayr, and their countryside to Hermel District.
This March, I spent three days (March 7, 8, and 9) with refugees from the Syrian coast who arrived via the al-Kabir al-Shamali River. With the official Arida Border Crossing along the coast still closed, these refugees had made their way around Sunni areas out of fear of any unnecessary problems. Of course, traversing Damascus Road towards the Masnaa Border Crossing was not an option for the same reason. As for the refugees bound for Hermel, their only option was the Orontes River, which they had to wade across as Israel had destroyed all the bridges.
The stories of the refugees who arrived in Hermel shortly after the regime fell, as well as those of the people who fled from the hellish events on the Syrian coast, reminded me of all the testimonies of the 2011 displacement. Only the names of the areas and the sect of the refugees had changed. The descriptions remained the same: “ethnic cleansing”, “killings based on ID”. Among the refugees were witnesses and survivors of the killing, people who fled with “nothing but the clothes on our backs”, many mothers who had no chance to bury their children, and wives who fled with their children after their husbands were killed or went missing. Just like in 2011, the refugees waded across the al-Kabir al-Shamali River, with its Lebanese bank becoming their safe haven. The same can be said about the Lebanese bank of the Orontes River as in 2011, Hermel District received thousands of refugees, many of whom remain in its towns to this day.
The people who crossed the river to escape the massacres and retaliation spoke about armed forces from Idlib and the specific targeting of Alawite neighborhoods, families in their homes, and people on the roads based on their IDs and accents. In a report published on March 18, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documents the killing of 6,316 people, including 4,711 civilians (4,172 men, 345 women, and 194 children), under varying circumstances in various parts of Syria between December 8 and March 18. This figure includes 2,237 people, among them 1,703 civilians (1,506 men, 132 women, and 65 children), killed between the outbreak of the incidents in March and March 16. On the other hand, survivors from the Syrian coast and its countryside speak of more than 5,000 victims, although we were unable to verify this number.
In tears, a woman who fled with her daughters from Baniyas via the river at noon on March 8 said, “Anyone who didn’t die yesterday died today”.
On the evening of March 7, a man in his 50s from the town of Ransiyah in the Tartus countryside arrived at the bank of the al-Kabir al-Shamali River. He began running back and forth aimlessly while waving his hand in the and saying to himself, “I couldn’t reach my house to get my wife and children out and bring them”.
Via the same river, and from border points outside the plain, Christian Syrian families arrived. The Legal Agenda has confirmed that at least ten of these families have taken refuge in Lebanon, while the new arrivals said that other Christian families also left. These people did not talk of Christians being directly targeted like the Alawites. Rather, they fled after they lost their sense of security, especially as six Christian Syrians were killed in Baniyas: “We don’t know when our turn will come”. Those whom the Legal Agenda managed to contact on the Syrian coast and in its countryside confirmed that they are not being targeted as Christians: “They’re targeting the Alawites at the moment. The six Christians killed in Baniyas might have been killed by mistake, just like some Sunnis were killed because they were mistaken for Alawites”. These people said that the Christians are living in great fear, having lost hope that they can continue living in Syria due to the current events. A woman living in a Christian village near Tartus told us that the residents there, like the Alawites, do not dare leave their homes, “except to go to the neighborhood store when necessary”.
One resident told the Legal Agenda that some inhabitants of Christian villages have fled their homes on the outskirts to live with their relatives in the village center. Some families have gathered inside one home to be close to one another. With deep sadness, one person said, “During the events of 2011, all my siblings went abroad, whereas I didn’t want to live anywhere but my homeland, Syria. Today, I will follow them if I can get out, but we fear the route”.
The new movement of refugees to Lebanon is occurring amidst a continued pause in the UNHCR’s registration of new refugees that began in 2015 at the behest of the Lebanese state. Sources told us that discussions are underway between the General Directorate of General Security and the UNHCR about potentially resuming the registration of new refugees, but no decision has been issued yet. With no document legitimizing their presence in Lebanon, the new refugees are in a precarious position that limits their ability to move about and puts them at risk of arrest and possible deportation.
The Map of the New Refugee Movement
While the second blood-drenched refugee movement settles into Akkar’s Alawite villages and towns, several other towns in Akkar and Syrian refugee camps on the plain have put up posters of Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa, sometimes labeling him the “Lion of Lebanon and Syria”. Some of these posters have been placed along the borders with towns embracing the new Alawite refugees, in a sight reminiscent of the posters of late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, his late son Bassel al-Assad, and former president Bashar al-Assad that once decorated such towns. Following the fall of the Assad regime, those images were replaced with the Lebanese Army’s emblem.
The refugees from the Syrian coast began trickling into the Akkar plain via the al-Kabir al-Shamali River on March 6, after the Syrian authorities announced that 13 police had been ambushed and killed by old-regime loyalists in the Latakia countryside and the clashes on the coast began. That evening, protestors took to the streets in Homs, Idlib, Damascus, and Hama, as did clans calling for armed action and revenge. The military operations quickly transformed into reprisals targeting Alawites in the Latakia and Tartus countryside, coinciding with the declaration of a public mobilization.
President of Massoudieh Municipality Ali al-Ali and mayor (mokhtar) of Hekr el-Dahri Ali Aziz al-Ali told the Legal Agenda that refugees from the Syrian coast are still flowing in steadily, with at least 50 new families arriving in each Alawite village on the Akkar plain per day. The presidents of the municipalities of Massoudieh, Hisah, and Tall Bireh and the aforementioned mayor of Hekr el-Dahri estimated that more than 5,000 refugee families (i.e. approximately 25,000 people) are being hosted by 10 towns on the Akkar plain, namely the Alawite towns of Massoudieh, Hekr el-Dahri, Tall Bireh, and Hisah and the mixed Sunni-Alawite towns of Semmaquiyeh, Tal Hmayreh, Tal Aabbas el-Charqi, Qanbar, Abboudieh, and Haouchab. Similarly, more than 300 families (1,500 people) have arrived in Alawite villages in Dreib, according to figures from Akkar’s Disaster Management Room. They settled in the homes of the inhabitants of the towns of Ain el-Zeit, Berbara, Daghleh, Rihaniyeh, Haitla, Saydnaya, Chikhlar (where Alawites are a minority), and Rmah (where they are also a minority). From the plain, approximately 5,000 refugee families (i.e. 25,000 people) continued toward Jabal Mohsen, and 70 refugee families from the Syrian coast arrived in Dhour el-Haoua, the Alawite village in Koura. Other families have rented in the towns of Bsarma and Btourram, which neighbor Dhour el-Haoua, according to the village’s mayor Ibrahim al-Ali.
On the other hand, figures from the Disaster Management Room’s March 16 report indicate that 2,699 new refugee families have arrived in 21 towns in Akkar. The map of the refugee presence also provides a rough idea of the number of Christian refugee families: the same figures indicate that eight families have taken refuge in the Maronite town of Munjez, seven in the Maronite town of Andaket, eight in the Orthodox town of Ouaynat, and 13 in Chikhlar (a mixed village inhabited by Sunnis, Orthodox, and an Alawite minority within the limits of Aaidmoun).
Along with these refugees, Alawite Lebanese residing in Syrian villages along the al-Kabir al-Shamali River – particularly al-Baqar, to which the majority of the residents of the Lebanese town of Tall Bibi were displaced in 1976 – have also sought refuge. These people do not own homes in Lebanon. So too have the Lebanese of Hatra, i.e. the Syrian part of the Lebanese village of Hekr el-Dahri, whose residents own 375 hectares in Syria. These people chose to live on the Syrian side after building houses on their lands. They have now lost these homes, along with their sources of livelihood, and live with their relatives on the Lebanese side.
The generosity of the inhabitants of the plain’s towns and their eagerness to help is evident not only from the fact that they have shared their sustenance with their refugee guests but also from the way they received the refugees at the river. There, the youth and men of the villages spread out to intercept the tired and distressed refugees and carry their children and elderly across the water. The roads leading from these towns to the river were abuzz with motorcycles, cars, vans, and tractors packed with refugees being transported to the residents’ homes. Once the houses were full, the residents distributed the refugees across the halls of the mosques, municipalities, and event venues.
While the host families are still sharing their sustenance with the refugees, some aid has begun to arrive from the UNHCR, organizations partnered with it, the Red Cross, and Caritas. However, the need far exceeds the supply, and the refugees complain that the aid is scarce. The townspeople have collected donations from one another and from their relatives abroad to cover the needs.
The Modest Return of 2011 and Post-2011 Refugees
Bebnine Municipality President Mahmoud Jawhar, whose town received 22,000 of the initial Syrian refugees – said that approximately 45% have returned to Syria since the regime’s fall. Subsequently, home rental prices have fallen 30%, and store rental prices have fallen 50%. A member of the municipality’s police said that waste production has also fallen by approximately 40% and that Bebnine natives’ job opportunities and sales revenue have improved as a result of the decline in competition from Syrian labor.
However, the municipality fears losing funding for its clinic. The clinic was established when the refugees arrived and serves both the refugee and host community. According to Jawhar, they have been informed that the funding has been renewed for three months, “but we don’t know whether it will continue”.
An official in an organization that provides services to old refugees said that several factors are delaying their return to Syria, including their engagement in agriculture not only as workers but also as sharecropping partners. She also said that some are waiting for the academic year to end and others went to their areas in Syria and then came back because of the extensive destruction and lack of basic living essentials.
During our tour of the refugee camps, we found the Rihaniyeh camp in the town of Bhannine empty, with all its 195 tents gone. The Union of Relief and Development Associations (URDA) was paying the rent for the land for the 195 refugee families. When the regime fell, the organization informed the refugees that the funding would cease and asked them about their plans for the future. Hence, 135 families decided to return to the countryside of al-Qusayr. The organization rented pickup trucks, transported the refugees and their tents in a convoy to their country via the Jousieh Border Crossing in al-Qaa, and informed UNHCR of their departure, as one of its officials (Adnan Talawi) told us.
On the other hand, the Legal Agenda observed that some families have only partially returned, with the mother and children remaining behind while the husband leaves or vice versa. Other families have returned without reporting that they did so in order to continue receiving aid as job opportunities remain scarce in Syria, as one refugee told us.
Mahmra Municipality President Abdulmunim Uthman informed the Legal Agenda that 10 to 15% of the refugees in his town have returned to Syria. He deemed that the lack of job opportunities in Syria today, the destruction of homes, the fact that the new generation who married in Lebanon do not own homes in Syria, and the damage to infrastructure all pose an obstacle to return.
During the Legal Agenda’s survey of the pace at which the refugees of Akkar’s plain are returning to Syria, we found that across 104 camps in the areas of Qaabrine and Mqaitaa, for example, no refugee had returned. Multiple camp leaders whom we contacted said that the reluctance to return stems from the absence of job opportunities and services and the destruction.
“Nothing Beats Living With Dignity”
The families returning from the Rihaniyeh camp reached al-Buwaidah al-Sharqiyah and Arjoun in the al-Qusayr countryside. From atop the rubble of his home in al-Buwaidah, Ahmad spoke about the importance of returning to Syria: “At least we can sleep without fear of being raided by security forces during the night because a motorcycle was stolen in Tripoli while we’re in Akkar”. He does not deny the difficulty of living in the town when its homes have been destroyed. Every day, the returnees wait for the bread seller to come by, and the electricity and water are only available for one hour every 24 hours. Ahmad and his siblings erected the tents that they brought from Lebanon near their destroyed home and settled into them. The following day, they sent their children to school. Likewise, employees in the army and government administrations have returned to their jobs. A public bus comes daily to take them to and from their work in Homs. Ahmad mentions that approximately 500 families have returned from Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and northern Syria to each of the villages of al-Buwaidah, Daminah al-Gharbiyah, and Soumariyyeh. “You can feel that there is a life here, albeit a difficult one”, he said.
The returnees’ relationship with the current Syrian government has been limited to a census carried out by the Ministry of Social Affairs. The governor of Homs also toured the area to inspect the destruction but did not offer any aid.
From Arjoun, Um Muhammad opened a video call to show me first-hand the state of her village and its destroyed homes. She had found her house destroyed, except for the kitchen on the first floor, where her son was living, and the salon on the second floor, where she lives with her husband. The family reinforced the house’s columns, fearing that it might collapse. They sealed the windows with nylon and celebrated their return “in spite of everything” after 11 years. “I longed to return to my country – refugee life is miserable”, Um Muhammad explained. Her husband has regained his pension as an army retiree, but she found the almond orchard – which had been a source of income for the family – cut down: “Not one tree remains. The whole orchard was all cut down after we were displaced, like all the other orchards in the village”. Upon returning to Arjoun, the family received food aid from URDA, and they received other aid from an organization from Idlib when the month of Ramadan began. “Besides that, we’ve seen no assistance”, Um Muhammad says.
Um Muhammad suffers from long electricity and water outages. Nevertheless, she feels very relieved: “Nobody can live with dignity except in their own country. Is there anything better than not having to hear, ‘Why haven’t you left? What are you still doing here?’?”, as occurred in Lebanon. Her neighbor Samira, who had fled with her family to Idlib, also returned temporarily. “She couldn’t stay here”, Um Muhammad explained, “She said that there’s life in Idlib and wanted to leave again”.
