Civil war in neghbouring Syria increasingly bleeding on to Lebanon's streets

• published: 04 Aug 2015
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Syria's deadly civil war has increasingly spilled into the streets of Lebanon in recent months, from car bombs in the southern suburbs of Beirut and Tripoli to rocket fire in the Bekaa Valley. In an interview with the Associated Press on Friday, Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre, a think tank, cited the flow of Syrian refugees into Lebanon as the country's most pressing crisis. The fighting in Syria has killed more than 100-thousand people, according to activists and the United Nations, and forced seven (m) million to flee their homes. Five (m) million people have been displaced within Syria and more than two (m) million have sought refuge in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq, according to the UN "We already have around 700-thousand registered refugees and another 600-thousand Syrians that are not technically refugees in the country," Salem said, "That means we have about 1.3 million Syrians in a country of four million. That would be like having 50 million people enter the United States in a matter of a few months." According to Salem, the flow of refugees has put "immense strain" on Lebanon's health system, infrastructure, local communities, and labour market. Syrians in Lebanon are often blamed for rising crime and for doing menial jobs that most Lebanese are unwilling to take. Political life in Lebanon has been paralysed in recent years: the country hasn't had a ruling government since April 2013. That instability has dented tourism, trade and investment - and, according to Salem, led to a deterioration in security. "Crime is much higher, kidnapping is higher," he explained. "So we are suffering from many, many of these dynamics." Moreover, there are growing fears that the actual fighting in Syria will spill over the border. "We have had car bomb incidents, we have had targeted attacks, on and off, that have triggered fears that may be the fighting at some point will move from Syria and include Lebanon," Salem said - adding that "so far it has only been sporadic". Those car bombings have come in Beirut's southern suburbs - a stronghold of Hezbollah, the organisation that supports President Bashar Assad - and in the northern city of Tripoli, where there is strong support for the Syrian opposition. There has also been street fighting in major cities and rocket attacks in the Bekaa Valley. Yet the bigger concern - one precipitated by the deadly gas attack in a Damascus suburb on 21 August - is that of the threat of a chemical attack. "Lebanon, like other Arab countries in the region, is certainly not prepared for any chemical weapons attack," said Salem. Those fears are keenly felt on the street, with local residents blunt in their prognosis. "Lebanon isn't prepared for such weapons, no one is prepared for it," said one man. "Chemical weapons have no smell or (detectible) effects. People will die immediately." "We hope the United Nations will be able to control the chemical weapons with co-ordination between Russia and the United States, because if such weapons are in the hands of small organisations, it will be too dangerous," added another. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/1e083924c41a28ec8b3cf2c64ede0dcc Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork