On their small family farm in the countryside north of Aleppo, where Abdelmouti and his wife Halima grew just enough cotton and fruit to sustain their growing family, the stirrings of unrest were a distant flicker at first. It was March 2011, and protests against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad were gaining momentum in the south.
“When we heard something was happening in [the city of] Deraa, we thought change would come, but we never thought it would lead to war,” says Abdelmouti (36), sitting cross-legged on the floor in the family’s current home: a spartan two-room flat in Sahab, a dusty industrial suburb of Amann, Jordan’s capital.
Little by little, he recalls, the war closed in. Soldiers from Assad’s regime were first into the local village. Then came fighters from the opposition Free Syrian Army. Eventually Islamic State took control. “It became very hard. There were lots of killings, and lots of tough rules. You could get killed just for having a cigarette.”
Smugglers
By March 2014, having lost an uncle and a cousin to the violence, Abdelmouti and Halima decided they had to leave. Abdelmouti paid smugglers the equivalent of €350 to bring them on the dangerous journey south to
Jordan
, where two of his brothers lived. Crouched in the back of a sheep lorry with more than 30 other families, and with their belongings packed into two bags, the couple and their seven children spent a week in transit – moving on back roads under cover of darkness so as to avoid checkpoints and resting in remote farmhouses by day until they finally reached the border.
One of their daughters got pneumonia on the journey and had to spend a week in hospital in Jordan. "We had good, stable lives. We had a full stomach," Halima says of their life in Syria. She gestures at the bare room, empty but for a chipped walnut wardrobe and an old mattress. "Now we don't have much," Halima says.
While the sprawling refugee camps that sprouted along Jordan’s northern border have become symbols of the exodus set in train by Syria’s four-year war, far greater numbers of Syrians are living precarious lives below the radar in towns and cities across Jordan. Some fled from the camps in the first two years of the war, when security was relatively relaxed, while others left to join family members elsewhere in Jordan under an official (now suspended) sponsored-leave scheme.
Many are in an acutely vulnerable position. The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, estimates more than four in five Syrian refugees in Jordan – more than 500,000 people – are outside the camp network. Of these, 86 per cent are living below the poverty line of $3.20 (€2.80) a day and the great majority are taking extraordinary steps – cutting their food intake or sending children out to work, for example – to get by. A Jordanian ban on Syrians taking up paid work has been compounded by chronic funding shortages for aid programmes, which mean financial and food assistance schemes for refugees outside the camps cannot come close to meeting demand.
On a visit to Jordan this week, Minister of State Seán Sherlock, who has responsibility for Irish Aid, visited Syrian families living in the suburbs of Amman and met officials from UNHCR Jordan, which has received €800,000 from Ireland so far this year (other NGOs working in Jordan, including Tearfund and Oxfam, have also received Irish funding).
Monthly allowance
He was told the UNHCR had developed a sophisticated aid dispersal system that allows Syrians in Jordan to use iris-scan technology and ATM cards to access a monthly allowance of 100 dinar (€124). Between this and food vouchers for his nine-member household, Abdelmouti and his family can just about make ends meet after paying for rent and electricity, but it’s a struggle. The scheme stretches only so far, however; funding shortages mean only 22,000 families can benefit.
Among those on the waiting list are Thanaa Abdalmajeed and her daughter Sawsan, both from the Syrian city of Homs. They have no income and, having run out of savings, have been unable to pay their 100 dinar rent for three months. “The landlord comes in every day and threatens to throw us out,” says Thanaa, whose husband died of a heart condition before the war. Returning to a camp could be an option were it not for Sawsan’s disability, which limits her mobility.
Of most concern to Thanaa is the fate of two of her children who are still in Syria. Her son Ahmed (23) was deported to Syria after being found by Jordanian police with a fake interior ministry ID card. He is now in Deraa, a flashpoint city. A second daughter is still in Homs, now largely destroyed, and cannot find a way out. “I’m alone with my daughter here. It’s a tragedy,” she says.
As with many of the refugees, the first rain of the season this week prompted Thanaa to think of the approaching winter and the difficulties it will bring. Around this time last year a neighbour gave mother and daughter a gas heater. Thanaa also found a rug on the street; it gave them much-needed extra warmth. But earlier this year, in dire need of cash, she sold the heater and the rug.
Conditions such as these partly explain why increasing numbers of Syrians based in Jordan and elsewhere in the region are opting to attempt the journey to Europe. Abdelmouti says he would consider it "if the opportunity arose". More alarmingly, agencies on the ground have also begun to notice increasing numbers of Syrians choosing to return home. That's one of the factors – along with the worsening security situation in southern Syria and the increasing popularity of Europe as a destination – that explain why for the past year the number of Syrian refugees in Jordan has been falling.
"People can just survive here, but it's got to be about more than just survival," says the UNHCR representative in Jordan, Andrew Harper. "People have got to have hope, and be able to maintain their dignity. That's what they're not able to do."
Role for Irish in Jordan, says Minister
European states can do more to help Jordan and other countries on Syria’s borders in dealing with the influx of refugees, Minister of State Seán Sherlock said on his visit to the region.
Mr Sherlock, who has responsibility for Irish overseas development assistance, visited Syrian refugees at the Asraq camp and in the Amman suburbs. He also met officials from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the Jordanian minister for industry, trade and supply, Maha Abdul Rahim Ali.
While the debate on the refugee issue in Europe had until now been dominated by admission numbers, Mr Sherlock said, the economic stability of Middle Eastern host countries such as Jordan was vital.
“Jordan’s economic stability is absolutely vital to everyone’s interests,” Mr Sherlock said. “I think there is a role now for Irish Aid, following this visit, to perhaps do more in host countries like Jordan.
“Not only do we need to improve the terms of trade but also we need to perhaps deploy more resources directly into the host countries through the multilateral organisations and local NGOs,” he said.
Even if a political solution were found in Syria tomorrow, Mr Sherlock said, it would be extremely difficult for many people ever to return home. He said he was particularly struck by the low school attendance rate among refugee children, which was partly due to families’ financial pressures. “The challenge of us is, what will the future be for a five- or 10-year-old of today. I worry deeply for that generation. They must not become the lost generation.”
