The uprising in Syria is increasingly threatening to destabilize neighboring countries but nowhere are the consequences being felt as severely as in Lebanon. According to the United Nations, the number of registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon surpassed one million Thursday. This means that one in four people in that country (estimated population: 4.5 million) is Syrian. Everybody knew the first destination of a Syrian refugee will be Lebanon because of the strong historical, economic, social and political bonds between the two neighbors. These bonds operate at various levels, with different sects reacting differently to the developments in Syria. As Syria occupied Lebanon from 1976 to 2005, it has key allies and sworn enemies in Lebanon. That is why every faction, every community in that country feels that it has a stake in the final outcome of the war next door. This has created social and political tensions. Tit-for-tat bombings between rival communities are once again a common occurrence in the streets of Lebanon, reviving fears of its own protracted civil war which ended in 1990. If this is not enough to create social fissures, there is the economic factor. At the local level, there are Lebanese complaints that Syrian refugees are taking away their livelihoods, offering to work for cheaper wages in unskilled jobs. We should remember that even before the eruption of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, Lebanon was grappling with a depleted infrastructure and inadequate public services. Electricity supplies average 18 hours per day, and much less in rural regions. Public water services are limited to three days per week at best. Overcrowded public schools and insufficient capacity at government clinics and hospitals that cater for the lower-income population, especially in rural areas, always make newspaper headlines. Add to this the losses from trade and tourism. Lebanon's export routes to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, and to Iraq and Jordan, have been blocked by the war in Syria. Tourism, a vital source of revenue, has dropped in the past years to near zero. Many countries, including the six members of the GCC, have been cautioning their nationals against travel to Lebanon. This is only part of the story. At the request of the Lebanese government, the World Bank Group undertook a study on the impact of Syrian crisis on Lebanon, in cooperation with other development partners, like the UN agencies, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The study says the refugee population will reach 1.6 million, or 37 percent of Lebanon's overall population, by the end of 2014. Government expenditure will be pushed by billions of dollars over the next 15 months to meet surging demand for public services, including health, education, water and electricity. Lebanon can't cope with the crisis without international aid on a massive scale. But international agencies can't concentrate all their assistance and efforts on one single country. Massive numbers of Syrians also have fled to other neighboring nations, including Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, as well as to Egypt, Europe and elsewhere (in all, 1.5 million at the last count). Still there is a case for treating Lebanon differently. The very fact that the number of school-age children among the refugees (400,000), exceeds the total of Lebanese children in public schools give us an idea of the staggering nature of the problem. Only a fraction of the money pledged by donors has been delivered to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and international aid agencies, which can only provide immediate, emergency relief in the form of food, water, blankets, fuel for heating, and sandbags for weatherproofing shelters and tents. And the UN says it has only 14 percent of the funds it needs for 2014($6.5 billion), leaving a $1.5 billion shortfall. World leaders who met in Kuwait and Geneva should back up their promises of assistance with action if they seriously want to avert a major humanitarian catastrophe.
