Fearing for their lives, Syrian refugees flee into Lebanon

MASAOUDIYEH, Lebanon — Hassan Suleiman huffed in the morning sun, sweating despite the ice-cold water running up to his shins under the weight of the child sitting on his shoulders, a backpack and a full-to-bursting plastic bag he carried across the Kabir River.

Behind him were his wife, mother-in-law and other relatives, gingerly making their way into the riverbed. Behind them snaked many more people, an ever-growing line, all fleeing the violence engulfing their country for the relative safety of Lebanon.

It had been five days since clashes between loyalists of deposed President Bashar Assad and Syrian government forces had devolved into a sectarian slaughter, turning the villages nestled in the emerald lushness of Tartus province into abattoirs.

In that time, hundreds of civilians — nearly 1,000, some activists say — were chased down, tortured and shot in a frenzy of vengeance predominantly against Alawites, coreligionists of Assad. Many hard-line Sunni Islamists count members of the Alawite sect as infidels.

Though Syrian officials insisted the situation was now under control, and that government-affiliated groups that targeted civilians would be punished, Suleiman, an Alawite farmer, was taking no chances.

His village, Ransiyah, was barely a mile and a half away from the river, which marks a portion of the border between Lebanon and Syria. That made it close enough for him to make furtive trips to get belongings from his home. But he kept visits brief, fearing he wouldn't have enough time to escape if state-aligned gunmen came to attack.

"The government are liars," he said. "Yes, maybe it's calm during the day. But at night they come and slaughter you." He glanced at people who gathered Monday on the Syrian side of the river, taking off their shoes and rolling up their pant legs before dipping their feet into the water.

Suleiman sighed.

He had come to Lebanon on Friday, along with other men because men were being targeted. Were it up to him alone, he said, he would risk returning to Syria.

But he had to think of his daughter: In his mind were dozens of videos feverishly circulated among villagers, depicting what was said to be pro-government fighters lining up residents and executing them with an AK-47 bullet to the head.

"If someone from the government comes for us and you use a rifle to kill him, you're [branded] a criminal; you're then held accountable and they slaughter you."

One the other hand, if you don't defend yourself, he said, "he kills you. There's no solution."

Near him was Abu Ali, 35, who had just crossed with his wife and three sons. He had escaped the first days of the unrest from Tartus city to his hometown village of Sheikh Saeed, 22 miles north of the Lebanese border. Then he decided to flee the village too.

"We left this morning because we were told gunmen came to our building in Tartus and they have been picking up fighting-age men," Abu Ali said, pointing to his sons, all young men over the age of 18. Like many interviewed, he refused to give his full name for fear of reprisals, citing relatives still in Syria.

"In half an hour, you'll find all the villagers in this area here on this side. No Alawite will remain there."

During Syria's nearly 14-year civil war, Lebanon hosted some 1.5 million to 2 million Syrians; around 260,000 of them had returned home after Assad's fall in November.

But the recent unrest, which has so far triggered an exodus of some 7,616 into Lebanon, was for authorities here an unwelcome reversal.

"We've received them because it's a humanitarian situation, but our situation as a municipality is below zero," said Ali Ahmad al-Ali, the mayor of Masaoudiyeh, an Alawite-dominated village near a kink in the narrow and shallow Kabir River. In fatter years, he would have an annual budget of $220,000 to deal with the refugee influx. But Lebanon's multiyear currency crisis has slashed that figure down to around $4,000.

"We have 550 families so far," Al-Ali said, adding that they were being sheltered in Masaoudiyeh's mosque and school and residents' houses.

"And as I'm talking to you, I was just told four or five new ones arriving. We can't keep up."

Sitting in a drab cinder-block shed lined with wool blankets and thin mattresses was Amaar Saqo, a farmer from the village of Khirbet al-Hamam — his makeshift home since Friday, when he escaped with his wife, six kids and other members of his extended family after gunmen surrounded nearby villages.

"We left at 4 a.m. I took nothing from my house but what you see me wearing," Saqo said, adding that the house had since been burned.

"They say they're chasing regime loyalists. Is my kid a regime loyalist? Is my wife a regime loyalist?"

Clashes began Thursday, when 16 security personnel were killed in the rural areas of Syria's Alawite-dominated coast, in what appeared to be an armed coup attempt by Assad loyalists against interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led a coalition of Islamist factions to topple Assad. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, or SNHR, a war monitor, counted 172 security personnel killed by antigovernment forces, who also killed 211 civilians, some in sectarian attacks.

As more security forces were surrounded and killed by pro-Assad militants, the government called for reinforcements, drawing in factions and armed gunmen.

Though they largely put down the putsch, many then turned their wrath on Alawites, a largely impoverished minority that constitutes some 10% of the country's population and which dominated Assad-era security services and state bureaucracy. (Alawites say that though some did benefit from their link to the previous government, Assad's cronyism was ecumenical, benefiting a tiny circle of people from all sects.)

The SNHR said 420 people were killed by the government troops and allied factions, including a large number of civilians. Another war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, put the death toll among civilians at 973. Other activists say thousands are dead.

In recent days, Al-Sharaa ordered the formation of a committee to investigate and punish violations against civilians.

But in a climate where distrust was the dominant emotion, Saqo and many others interviewed here insisted government forces were now working to frame those they had slaughtered, dressing their corpses in uniforms and planting guns on them in an attempt to prove the military's argument that it was fighting terrorism.

There was little evidence for that, or for pro-government figures' insistence that it was the Assad loyalists who committed the worst infractions in order to sully Al-Sharaa's image and sabotage his attempts at gaining international legitimacy.

But reports of continued attacks were eagerly picked up to bolster the competing narratives of the rival camps: On one side is a once-powerful minority unwilling to relinquish its influence, on the other an Islamist government with Al Qaeda roots finally removing its mask of civility.

But for the people wading across the Kabir River, their concern is going home and being safe.

"We want international intervention. Russia, U.N. — anyone. We won't go back home without protection," said Khadija, a woman in her 50s staying with her sons at the school, repeating a common view among the refugees here.