Some Syrian refugees risk returning to opposition-held areas as hostility in host Lebanon grows

BY OMAR ALBAM AND ABBY SEWELL
Updated 1:21 AM EDT, June 12, 2024

IDLIB, Syria (AP) — For more than a decade, a steady flow of Syrians have crossed the border from their war-torn country into Lebanon. But anti-refugee sentiment is rising there, and in the past two months, hundreds of Syrian refugees have gone the other way.

They’re taking a smugglers’ route home across remote mountainous terrain, on motorcycle or on foot, then traveling by car on a risky drive through government-held territory into opposition-held northwestern Syria, avoiding checkpoints or bribing their way through.

Until this year, the numbers returning from Lebanon were so low that the local government in Idlib run by the insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al Sham had not formally tracked them. Now it has recorded 1,041 people arriving from Lebanon in May, up from 446 the month before. A Turkish-backed local administration overseeing other parts of northwest Syria said arrivals from Lebanon have increased there, too.

Tiny, crisis-wracked Lebanon is the host of the highest per capita population of refugees in the world and has long felt the strain. About 780,000 Syrian refugees are registered with the U.N. refugee agency there and hundreds of thousands more are unregistered.

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Sewell reported from Beirut.

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