The return of the displaced “Takha Bahs” and the Lebanese contact with Damascus to raise the blame!
Hopes quickly diminished that the promised meeting between the Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, Abdullah Bouhabib, and his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Al-Miqdad, would pave the way for setting a timetable for the return of displaced Syrians to their homes, as had been hoped by the Minister of Displaced Persons in the caretaker government, Issam Charafeddine, who repeatedly tried to suggest that Obstructing their return falls on the responsibility of the Lebanese government, which has not decided to form a ministerial-security delegation to negotiate with the Syrian government to organize their voluntary and safe return to their towns and villages.
The president received #Najib_Mikati The Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, Dr. Natalia Kandem, and the Fund’s Regional Director in the Arab Countries, Laila Bakr, who announced after the meeting: Today we were in the process of discussing the Fund’s assistance to the country. #LebanonPresident Mikati referred to several issues, including… pic.twitter.com/Tuzb07Bzav
– Presidency of the Council of Ministers (@grandserail) September 14, 2023
Minister Sharaf al-Din, as ministers in the caretaker government told Asharq Al-Awsat, made a mistake in his assessment of the reality of the Syrian position and repeatedly sought to form the delegation under the pretext that Lebanon had not reciprocated the Syrian regime’s willingness to receive them, without realizing the reality of the Syrian position against the backdrop that Damascus links The return of its citizens to their homes due to the international community’s response to its demand to rebuild what was destroyed in Syria, holding the international coalition responsible for the destruction that befell Syrian towns and villages, under the pretext that it was behind the devastating war that targeted them.
Lebanese Minister of Displacement, Issam Sharaf al-Din (left), during his recent visit to Damascus with Syrian Minister of Local Administration, Hussein Makhlouf, in charge of the displaced persons file (National Agency)
However, Minister Sharaf al-Din’s insistence on absolving the Syrian regime of its responsibility by not responding to the efforts aimed at returning the displaced, due to the political, security and economic burdens resulting from their arbitrary presence in Lebanon that it could no longer bear in light of the deterioration of its conditions at all levels, collided with Syria’s rejection of their return. Otherwise, why did the Arab Ministerial Committee, which was formed after Syria’s return to the Arab League, decide to freeze its meetings with the Syrian government due to its lack of response to the road map it drawn up to re-normalize Arab-Syrian relations?
In this context, Arab diplomatic sources revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the Syrian regime did not provide the security and political facilities required to stop the “export” of contraband, most notably Captagon, to neighboring countries on the one hand, and its refusal to respond to the requirements leading to Damascus gradually moving to the entry stage. In the political solution to end the war in Syria.
The seventh item of the Council of Ministers session on September 11, 2023, devoted to the file #Syrian_displaced peopleThe Ministry of Information was entrusted with launching awareness campaigns about the dangers of displacement on the Syrian and Lebanese communities and urging citizens to cooperate with the security and military services to arrest smuggling gangs on the border, while clarifying that…
— Ziad T. Makary (@ZiadMakary) September 11, 2023
The same sources pointed out that the Syrian regime is constantly seeking to place the responsibility for not receiving the displaced on the shoulders of the international community under the pretext of not responding to its call to contribute to the reconstruction of Syria. The sources revealed that the program that was previously prepared by the Syrian government in coordination with the Lebanese government to return the displaced who took refuge in Lebanon, It suffered from some defects, because the Syrian security services insisted on checking the lists of the names of those who wish to return to their homes, and excluded hundreds of them for security and political reasons. They said that the claim of the Syrian security services that they are not pursuing returnees is normal as long as they subjected the lists to security scrutiny and deleted them from them. Names of undesirables for security and political reasons.
She said that the Syrian regime has no intention of providing facilities to the Lebanese government in exchange for withholding them from the Arab Ministerial Committee, even though it has an interest in proceeding with the normalization of its Arab relations after Syria returns to the Arab League.
An army unit, supported by a patrol from the Intelligence Directorate, raided on various dates this week a number of Syrian refugee camps in the Bekaa region and arrested 43 Syrians for surreptitiously entering Lebanon and moving around without identification papers.#Lebanese army #LebaneseArmy
– Lebanese Army (@LebarmyOfficial) September 16, 2023
In turn, Lebanese ministerial sources pointed out that there is no problem in communication between Beirut and Damascus in preparation for the visit that Minister Bouhabib is supposed to make to Damascus at the head of a security delegation limited to the Acting Director General of General Security, Major General Elias Al-Bisri, and the Secretary General of the Supreme Defense Council, Major General Muhammad Mustafa, after… It was decided to legalize the delegation. She said that the visit, if it takes place, comes in the context of raising the censure, because Damascus does not have the required readiness, not to receive the first wave of displaced people to Lebanon, but to stop the flow of the second wave of them to Lebanese territory through thousands of them taking illegal crossings, specifically from the overlapping border areas. Between the two countries, especially since the measures taken by the Lebanese army to control the borders and stop infiltrations from inside Syria into Lebanon are not sufficient unless they receive the required response from the Syrian army stationed along the border between the two countries.
On 9/16/2023, an army unit, supported by a patrol from the Intelligence Directorate, raided a camp for displaced Syrians in the Taybeh-Hamoudiyah area in the Bekaa, where two citizens (A.A.A.) and (A.S.A.) and a Syrian person and a number of A man wanted for drug trafficking opened fire on army personnel, who responded in kind. 2/1 pic.twitter.com/N9ErMhyppz
– Lebanese Army (@LebarmyOfficial) September 16, 2023
The same sources considered that Lebanon is being exposed to a new wave of the Syrian “invasion” of Lebanon by keeping the Syrian borders open to facilitate their infiltration into the Lebanese interior, and they said that Lebanon is currently suffering under the burden of an accumulation of crises that open to a political crisis of another kind related to the imbalance that threatens its political structure. It opens the door to playing with its sectarian and political fabric, and this is what has begun to constitute a concern that may be the only unifying factor for the Lebanese. It is supposed to be addressed despite the difference that continues to obstruct the election of a president of the republic.
Therefore, Bouhabib’s visit to Syria, if it takes place, will not advance or delay everything related to the return of displaced Syrians in light of the high level of economic and social crises that are pushing thousands of Syrians to infiltrate Lebanon, and this calls for a legitimate question about the fate of the first wave of displaced people that arrived. A new wave of organized smuggling into Lebanon occurred.
Accordingly, the Lebanese attempts to persuade the Syrian regime to prepare a program to receive the displaced are nothing more than “cooking and gravy,” because what Damascus demands exceeds Lebanon’s ability to meet it after it attached a new clause to its demand for the international community to reconstruct Syria, requiring “an end to the American and Turkish occupations.” For northern Syria.
2023-09-17 12:43:45
#Lebanese #government #crisis #IMF #ran #money
