BAR ELIAS, Lebanon (AP) – Mohammed Zakaria lives in a plastic tent in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, just as long as war raged in his native Syria.
He and his family fled bombing raids in 2012, thinking it would be a short, temporary stay. His hometown of Homs was under siege and subject to a fierce Syrian military campaign. He did not even take his ID with him.
Almost ten years later, the family is still not back. Zakaria, 53, is among the millions of Syrians who are unlikely to return in the foreseeable future, even if they are weakened abroad. In addition, Zakaria is struggling to survive Lebanon’s financial collapse and social upheaval.
“We assumed we would come in and out,” Zakaria said as he sat outside his tent on a cold day recently as his children walked around in worn-out slippers.
Syria has been embroiled in a civil war since 2011, when Syrians revolted against President Bashar Assad amid a wave of Arab Spring uprisings. The protests in Syria, which began in March of that year, quickly turned into revolt – and ultimately a full-blown civil war – in response to brutal military repression by Assad’s security apparatus.
Nearly half a million people died and about 12,000 children died according to the UN Children’s Agency, UNICEF, has been injured in the conflict over the past decade. The conflict also led to the largest displacement crisis since World War II.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said this week that since the war began in 2011, about 2.4 million people have been displaced in and outside Syria annually. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians face constant displacement with each passing year the conflict continues and the economic conditions deteriorate.
The war divided Syria and left it in ruins. Nearly one million children were born into exile.
Of the country before the war of 23 million, almost 5.6 million are refugees living in neighboring countries and Europe. About 6.5 million have been displaced in Syria, most of them over five years.
Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country with a population of about 5 million, is home to the highest concentration of refugees per capita, estimated at about 1 million. Most of them live in informal tent settlements spread across Lebanon’s Bekaa, not far from the Syrian border.
Zakaria, a former porter of a Homs construction company, has struggled to take care of his family, even though it is growing in Lebanon. He has two wives and eight children, including two who were born in Lebanon. One of his children was just a year old when the family escaped from Syria.
In Lebanon, it is difficult to find work due to the economic and financial crisis. Financial aid is scarce and irregular. A currency collapse caused inflation and prices to skyrocket. Zakaria is now trying to make ends meet by selling gas bottles used for heaters to other refugees in his settlement.
He earns 1,000 Lebanese pounds (about 10 cents) from every gas can he sells. But this winter, its neighbors in the settlement, which houses about 200 Syrian refugee families, could barely buy enough gas to heat their tents.
Due to the unprecedented economic crisis, Lebanon’s currency has so far lost more than 80% of its value.
“Life is expensive here,” he said. “It’s even expensive for medicine or doctors so expensive.”
When his wife needed urgent eye surgery, Zakariya arranged for her to be briefly smuggled to Syria to do the surgery there. The operation would cost 22 million Lebanese pounds – about $ 2,200 at the current market rate. They manage to get it done in Syria for 85,000 Lebanese pounds ($ 850).
Zakaria said he feels very sad for his younger three children who have no memories of Syria and their home in Homs. They were also not yet in school and do not know how to read and write.
According to UNICEF, nearly 750,000 Syrian children in neighboring countries, including Lebanon, are not in school.
“All our memories are gone now,” Zakaria said as he watched his children run around and play hop-up. Two dirty stray cats serve as their playmates.
“Now we have a generation – ten year olds are a new generation,” he said. “I have young children and … they do not even know our neighbors” at home.
Many Syrians cannot return because their homes have been destroyed in the fighting, or because they are afraid of military service or retaliation from government forces.
Zakaria holds on to the hope that one day he will return to his home.
“God wants us to die in our country,” he said. “Everyone must die in their own country.”