BEQAA (Lebanon) (Pakistan Point news / Sputnik - 12th January, 2019) The marshy soil and a dozen of almost barefoot and untidy children are the first things you notice at the entrance to the tent camp of Syrian refugees in Lebanon's town of Barelias.
The tent town, which the locals simply call Abu Mazen, is one of the most affected by heavy rains, hail and wind, which have been bossing around Lebanon for the past four days.
There are hundreds of refugee camps in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley. Families that have fled the war in Syria several years ago, gathered in groups, rented land and built tents from scrap materials. The residents of the Abu Mazen camp were no exception.
There are about 50 tents in the camp with over 300 residents, mainly families from Syria's cities of Idlib and Raqqa. All of them have been living in Lebanon from four to seven years. Each family has at least five children, many of whom were born here and know almost nothing about Syria. It is likely they know nothing about life outside the camp too.
Most of the refugees have long overstayed their visas and did not renew their immigration documents. They simply do not have money to cover new documents and fines. While they are in the camp, no one touches them, but if they go outside, they can run into a police patrol, and therefore trouble follows.
With the support of international organizations, the authorities are trying to help the refugees, but that is not enough. Each family and each resident of the camp has been registered by the Lebanese Directorate of General Security and each has their unique numbers.
The country's leadership, knowing that the majority of Syrians continue to live in Lebanon, violating the visa regime, still advocates the voluntary and dignified return of Syrians to their homeland, to the areas, which were liberated from terrorists.
"Litani River streams along the camp perimeter. At night, when the heavy rain started, the water began to pour into tents, flow of water has broken thin concrete floor in many places. Everything was floating by morning. Some families had a water level exceeding 50 centimeters [19.6 inches] in tents," Abu-Mahmoud, one of the camp elders, said.
Abu-Mahmoud is relatively lucky, as his house is located in the beginning of the camp on the other side of the river. But the water did not mercy his corner. The man with his wife and five children were waiting for the fury of nature to end on two humid couches, covering themselves with everything they could find.
The stereotype about the constantly warm climate in Lebanon disappears the first minute of being in Beqaa. The thermometer in the car showed 3 degrees Celsius (37 degrees Fahrenheit) when we entered the camp and that was in the bright sun.
"It was snowing and raining the night before yesterday, the temperature dropped below zero. We were afraid that we would not survive that awful night," the neighbor of Abu-Mahmoud said.
Most of the residents at dawn took their children to a nearby school, without waiting for aid. By that time, volunteers of a number of charitable organizations managed to bring mattresses and warm blankets for the victims to the dry classrooms. The adults left the children and went back to the camp to save their property.
All tents are built almost identically: two rooms, one is for men and the other one is for women, a kitchen and a toilet. Now, because of the high water level, the contents of the toilets almost in each tent are literally mixed with what people had in the kitchen.
The tents are made of oilcloth, broken pallets and cardboard, the floors are covered with a layer of concrete. There is nothing much left of the concrete mixture now, just wet clay, in which your shoes get stuck. The ceiling sags under the weight of accumulated water.
All belongings have been drying on the street for some days now. People go inside their tents from time to time to pour out water and then come back to the streets, where at least the sun warms them a little.
"The main goal now for each family is to dry at least one room, to put a small stove there and get five liters of diesel fuel. It is necessary to do to survive the coming night. Moreover, not everyone was able to bring children to schools and mosques and now they spend the night with them here," Abu-Mahmoud explained, leading us to the "lake," which has formed in the middle of the camp.
Despite the cold, children still manage to have some fun: three to four-year-old boys are running barefoot, using a rusted minibus as a slide and the puddle next to it as a pool.
"This is the fun of our 'touristic' land," Abu-Mahmoud said sadly.
Children in the camp not risk getting pneumonia and scabies, while anyone who is standing on their feet and can hold a mop, helps to pull out water both from tents and from the roofs.
Abu-Mahmoud himself came from Raqqa. He fled from there to Iraq with his family, when the offensive of Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia) had started.
"It was a frightening time. We paid money to smugglers and were taken to Iraq. After living there for a while, we got to Jordan, and lived there for several months in a camp right on the border with Syria, then we moved to At Tanf, which is controlled by the Americans and the opposition. When we realized that they did not consider us as people at all, we walked back to Jordan through the desert and from there we illegally got to Syria in a truck, which transported sheep," Abu-Mahmoud said, telling his story.
Coming back to Syria, Abu-Mahmoud and his family got to the border with Lebanon. They found guides and, with a small group of similarly desperate countrymen, crossed the border along a smuggling path.
"I now doubt whether it was worth it, to come all the way here in order to drown in the pouring rain, without being able to simply warm up your own children," the man continued, throwing his hands up.
According to his wife, they would like to return home, but the Syrian government does not control Raqqa yet.
In total, over 150,000 refugees from Syria live in tent camps in Beqaa. According to human rights organizations, about 50,000 people are in the same situation as Abu-Mahmoud. 15 camps were completely swept away by streams of water, and they simply ceased to exist. The people were evacuated.
The status of Abu Mazen camp is estimated as critical. Some camps were more fortunate, as volunteers from UN bodies managed to reach them yesterday and delivered a number of blankets, mattresses and warm clothes. Residents of this informal settlement of refugees are warming up only with hope that they have not been forgotten and that help is underway.
