Desperate journeys: Syrian refugees fleeing Israel’s assault on Lebanon

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Al-Bara, Syria – Musa Baghdadi paid $6,000 for the privilege of exchanging one bombardment for another. “I paid to escape the shelling in Lebanon to reach my village, which is also under bombardment by Assad’s army,” he tells Al Jazeera at his modest, one-storey home in al-Bara, western Idlib.

The little house has not fared well in the 12 years since the Baghdadi family fled the Syrian regime to take refuge in Lebanon. It currently has no windows – all will need to be replaced – and has suffered significant damage from shelling by al-Assad regime forces. It’s not as bad as many of Baghdadi’s neighbours have suffered, though – many houses nearby were destroyed.

Baghdadi, 64, is just one of more than a quarter of a million Syrians believed to have returned to Syria since the full-blown Israeli assault on Lebanon began last month. The precise number has been placed at 253,284 by local media reports.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), based in London, the number of Syrian refugees killed in Lebanon as a result of the ongoing and intense Israeli escalation on Lebanese territory since September 21 has now reached 176, including 33 women and 46 children.

So, after 12 years in Lebanon, Baghdadi returned with his wife and four grandchildren, aged 11 to 14, to their home village of al-Bara, located near the front lines of Syrian regime forces. The children’s father – Baghdadi’s son – was killed in 2012 when their home came under bombardment, and their mother has since remarried and remained in Syria.

Musa Baghdadi and Warda Yunis with their four grandchildren, having finally reached their old home in Al-Bara town, Idlib [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

The journey home from Lebanon was far from an easy one.

Baghdadi had already taken his family away from their adopted home in al-Duwayr, a village in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon when the Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon began in full force on September 21. The town had already come under fire by the Israeli army on August 23 during the near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah across the border since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October last year.

The family headed first to the village of Ghazieh, south of Sidon, about 30km (18.5 miles) away. That first night, they were forced to sleep on the pavement of a street in Sidon because the traffic was so congested by people fleeing al-Duwayr that they could not move on.

“The next day, we went to a mountain near Sidon and rented a house for $350 for one week. It had no water or electricity, but it was still better than staying on the street,” Baghdadi says.

His account tallies with those of other displaced people in Lebanon – Lebanese and Syrians alike – who claim that landlords are hiking rents to take advantage of their predicament.

An ‘amnesty’ that is anything but

As the Israeli assault on Lebanon mounted in September, Baghdadi decided it would actually be safer to return to Syria. Even though the journey to the family’s old village in rural Idlib, crossing through areas controlled by the Syrian regime, would be fraught with the danger of arrest or kidnapping by members of the Syrian armed forces, it seemed preferable to remaining in Lebanon.

On September 22, coinciding with the launch of the Israeli assault on Lebanon, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad issued his government’s 24th promise of amnesty to political prisoners and men of conscription age who have avoided forced military service. But observers say this promise, made to encourage Syrians to return home, is not what it seems.

Writing for Al Jazeera, Hadi al-Bahra, president of the Syrian National Coalition, said: “Al-Assad utilises these decrees as a means to deceive the international community that he is making an effort towards stability and reconciliation.

“But a close examination of these decrees reveals that they leave considerable room for security agencies to manipulate the fates of individuals who are purportedly covered by the amnesty.”

While the decrees specify amnesty for certain offences, charges levelled by the regime against political opponents, such as “terrorism” and “high treason”, remain excluded, al-Bahra said. “This effectively means that the majority of political detainees and activists remain outside the scope of these decrees, rendering them ineffective in providing a safe environment for the return of refugees.”

For Baghdadi, the risk to ordinary citizens like him and his family seemed too great not to take additional steps to avoid encounters with the regime’s forces once they reached Syria.

“Keeping my son’s children safe – my son was killed in 2012 by Assad’s forces – was all I could think about,” he says. “I contacted a smuggler who promised me that we would reach Idlib without passing any regime checkpoints for $6,000.”

One long week on the road

The family’s journey to their village in Syria took seven days, during which they passed through Damascus, Homs and Hama, eventually reaching the Aleppo countryside in a truck via agricultural roads free of regime checkpoints.

“The nights were terrifying, especially since most of our movements were at night, with a truck taking us on rough roads without turning on the lights for fear of being detected by the regime’s forces,” Baghdadi says.

He and his wife, Warda Yunis, 56, arrived in their hometown a week after setting off “with tears of longing and joy”, he says.

“The moment I saw our village, I prostrated in gratitude to God for saving us and bringing us back safely,” Yunis says. “I was shocked by the destruction in my hometown and devastated when I reached our house and found it heavily damaged from the shelling over the past 12 years.”

Yunis had been eager to return and was the one who pushed her husband to make the decision to go, she says.

“Twelve years ago, we sought refuge in Lebanon to escape the war, but in my last days there, I witnessed a number of Syrian refugees being killed due to Israeli air strikes,” she explains. “If we had stayed in Lebanon, we would have died. Here, also, we are at risk of death, but I prefer to die in my village,” Yunis says now.

Smuggler fees and payments to cross

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), approximately 235,000 people crossed into Syria from Lebanon by land between September 21 and October 3.

In a statement on Friday, Matthew Luciano, head of the IOM office in Lebanon, said this mass displacement included about 82,000 Lebanese and 152,000 Syrians who have left the country by road, in addition to about 50,000 other individuals, mostly Lebanese, who left from Beirut airport. Some 10,000 Syrians left via Beirut airport during the same period, and a further 1,000 have fled by sea.

Syrians have not had an easy time in Lebanon, even before the war on Gaza sparked regular exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah last October.

“Before the war in Lebanon, we were uncomfortable, especially after the assaults on Syrian refugees and calls for their deportation,” says Mariam al-Qassem, 60, a mother of four who has lived in Sidon, southern Lebanon, for the past 12 years. She speaks to Al Jazeera from her home in Ihsim, also in rural Idlib, after her journey from Lebanon where she is tenderly watering plants she has placed on the outside wall of her home – the start of making this a home again.

“With the onset of the war, we had no choice but to return and face all the risks we might encounter,” she adds.

As Israeli strikes intensified in southern Lebanon over the past few weeks, al-Qassem and her family fled to the village of Sebline just north of Sidon, where they spent four days in an UNRWA shelter before contacting a smuggler to secure a route back to their town of Ihsim in the Idlib countryside.

“When my husband contacted the smuggler, the agreement was that we would pay him money in exchange for avoiding any checkpoints of the regime’s army along the way,” al-Qassem explains.

Despite these assurances, however, “when our journey began, we were surprised that the smuggler took us to the Masnaa crossing controlled by Assad’s forces”, al-Qassem says. The smuggler disappeared at this point, leaving the couple and their children to fend for themselves.

She feared her husband would be arrested and worried for her son Ahmed, 20, who is considered a conscription target in Syria. “I would prefer to die in Lebanon rather than cross through the Syrian regime’s checkpoints,” she says.

“My husband and son entered a room for Syrian security at the crossing and stayed there for about two hours while I waited outside with my daughter, my eyes never stopped crying out of fear for them,” says al-Qassem.

“The unfortunate thing is that Lebanese were allowed to enter Syria without any obstacles, while Syrians were extorted to be allowed to cross,” she adds.

When al-Qassem’s husband, Omar Mohammed Saleh Fadiel, and their son Mustafa finally emerged from the Syrian security room after paying them off – 200,000 Syrian pounds ($15) per person, according to Fadiel – they were told to check in with the recruitment office in Damascus, where their son would be required to join the military within 15 days.

Between there and their village, the family would have to go through the same routine 10 more times.

“At every checkpoint of Assad’s army that we encountered; we were asked to pay money to be allowed to pass,” Fadiel explains.

He says one of the most challenging checkpoints they encountered was a barrier manned by the Fourth Division of the Syrian Army near the city of Manbij in the Aleppo countryside, where the bus carrying them was held at the checkpoint for an entire night as they waited for permission to cross.

“Throughout that night, every now and then, members of the Fourth Division would come up to us, search us, threaten us and demand money to allow us to pass through,” Fadiel says. “At this checkpoint alone, I paid nearly 4 million Syrian pounds [$270].” Those who cannot pay these “fees” face arrest.

Homecoming

After being allowed to pass through the Fourth Division checkpoint, the family’s journey continued until, one day later, they reached the humanitarian crossing between the areas controlled by the Syrian National Army and those controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led coalition of ethnic militias and rebel groups.

“Reaching the humanitarian crossing meant that we had overcome the danger that was looming over us,” Fadiel says.

“Once we were allowed to enter the areas controlled by the Syrian opposition in the eastern Aleppo countryside, we immediately headed to our town of Ihsim in Idlib countryside,” he says.

According to the Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, about 1,700 civilians fleeing the ongoing war in Lebanon have now arrived in areas of northwestern Syria controlled by the Syrian opposition.

It is a huge relief to Fadiel and his wife that they have finally arrived home. “If there were borders between Lebanon and our area, I would have returned long ago, but the fear of the unknown fate awaiting me in the areas controlled by Assad’s regime is what kept me from going back,” he says. Now that he has finally done it, Fadiel’s dearest wish is to be part of rebuilding his village once the shelling from al-Assad’s forces stops.

He says he hopes he never has to leave again.