Syrians have been resented for taking jobs, driving down wages, overloading schools and hospitals, and even worsening a power shortage
* Lebanon in fear of spillover from Syrian war
* Attacks against Syrians have spiked in recent weeks
* A million refugees burden schools, wages and power supply
* Authorities discuss setting up formal refugee camps
By Alexander Dziadosz
BEIRUT, Sept 24 (Reuters) - When Syrian Islamist rebels seized the Lebanese border town of Arsal last month, it was bad news not only for Lebanon but also for the more than 1 million Syrians living there, most of them refugees from the war raging next door.
Equivalent to a quarter of the pre-war population, the Syrians were already resented for taking jobs, driving down wages, overloading schools and hospitals, and even worsening an electricity shortage. To some, Arsal was the last straw.
Semaan Khawam, a 40-year-old Syrian-Lebanese artist, had just left his friend's apartment in east Beirut on a recent Saturday night when over half a dozen young men in plain clothes surrounded him and demanded to see his papers. He refused.
"I didn't even finish my sentence and they attacked me," he said, smoking a cigarette in his studio.
The men punched him in the face and tore open his bag. One found ID showing that Khawam, who is both Syrian and Lebanese, had been born in Damascus, and demanded to know who had given him Lebanese citizenship. Then they hit him again.
"For me, it wasn't the beating, it was the insult," said Khawam, who has lived in Lebanon since 1988.
Syrians have long faced discrimination and abuse in Lebanon. But since Arsal, where the Islamist fighters killed around 20 soldiers before withdrawing with hostages, more and more assaults have been reported.
As the army shelled the town, killing dozens of Syrian refugees in the process, according to medics, army chief General Jean Kahwaji told a televised news conference that refugee camps must not be allowed to become "hotbeds of terrorism".
At the same time, local media have reported vigilante attacks, and police raids on refugees, with an upsurge after militants affiliated with the Islamic State group beheaded two of the captive Lebanese soldiers.
"THE SYRIAN IS YOUR ENEMY"
Residents of the Bekaa Valley - where the bulk of refugees live, in makeshift encampments - have kidnapped refugees and burned down tents.
In Beirut, residents have handed out flyers demanding that the Syrians leave their neighbourhood. In a Christian area, graffiti appeared reading: "Beware your enemy, the Syrian is your enemy," according to local media.
"There has been a lot of damage (since Arsal)," said Social Affairs Minister Rachid Derbas.
"The Syrian refugee is fleeing to Lebanon in search of security, and now he does not feel secure because he's started to sense that those who received him at first are getting fed up with him."
Some degree of resentment may have been inevitable in a country that now hosts more refugees per citizen than any other.
Apart from adding to the strain on electricity and water supplies - patchy at the best of times - the abundance of penniless Syrian labourers has pushed down wages, a fact readily exploited by employers but resented by Lebanese workers.
Politicians also fret about the mainly Sunni Muslim refugees' impact on Lebanon's fragile sectarian balance, in which power is carefully divided between Christians, Shi'ite Muslims, Sunnis, and other, smaller groups.
Ahmad Fatfat, a Sunni lawmaker who has advocated setting up formal camps, said government neglect of the refugees' situation and international failure to resolve the Syrian conflict had let the problem grow to a dangerous extent.
TIME BOMB
Beside the strain on infrastructure, Fatfat said there was a risk that some refugees could become affiliated with Syrian armed groups.
"All of this creates a sort of time bomb," he said. "But not a normal bomb - it resembles a nuclear bomb in the volume of damage it would do if it went off."
Many Syrians have been drawn to Lebanon by the cultural, linguistic, economic and political ties that have bound the two countries throughout history.
Few areas better illustrate the ambiguous situation this has placed them in than the town of Burj al-Shemali, about 20 km (12 miles) from the Israeli border.
Migrant workers have been coming here from Syria since long before the war, and the makeshift camps where they lived have simply been converted into refugee camps, a change in name and the number of people living there more than anything else.
The refugees have lived here peacefully for the most part, but this month the local administration made headlines with a decree that appeared to require the camps to be evacuated.
The town's mayor, Ali Deeb, says media blew the issue out of proportion, and that the order was only an attempt to ensure employers were providing housing for the workers they needed, and to organise the camps, which had grown out of control.
Like other towns, Burj al-Shemali has imposed a curfew of sorts, but Deeb said it was in place before the events in Arsal, and had been intended to protect refugees from attack. "There are people who want to fish in murky waters," he said.
Besides, the national government was overwhelmed, he said. "In every village, we need to organise our own affairs."
NOWHERE TO GO
In the dusty camp of plastic tarp and stick tents, within earshot of Lebanese police, refugees said they had not been threatened, but were struggling to find somewhere else to go.
One 45-year-old refugee from the Syrian city of Aleppo who gave his name only as Mohamed said he had a family of 10 to house, but could not even afford the rent of $100-150 a month for a single room with a kitchen.
"A room with a kitchen - for 10 people! Where am I supposed to live?"
Some politicians have proposed setting up formal camps similar to those in Turkey and Jordan, the next biggest hosts of Syrian refugees.
But Lebanon has reason to be wary. More than 60 years ago, it took in tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the war of Israel's creation. They have now grown to hundreds of thousands, their camps turned into permanent, squalid slums. What is more, the militarisation of Palestinian camps is widely seen as a catalyst of Lebanon's own 15-year civil war, which only ended in 1990.
Perhaps inevitably for a country where power is shared out on confessional lines, the debate has taken on a sectarian tone.
The deputy chief of the Shi'ite movement Hezbollah - which has sent fighters to aid Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against overwhelmingly Sunni rebels - has been quoted in local media as saying armed groups could take advantage if the Syrian refugees were given permanent camps. Christian politicians have also been quoted as rejecting the idea.
Even if such camps are established, the question of where to put them is also fraught. Lebanon is about a third the size of Belgium, and space is limited.
Placing camps near the borders could expose them to spillover from the war. And, even then, the sheer numbers mean that "a camp is no panacea", said Ninette Kelley, the representative in Lebanon of the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR.
"What really is needed is massive international support," she said.
Social Affairs Minister Derbas, a Sunni, said he believed formal camps were nevertheless the only real solution left, and that "test camps" were already being planned.
"The previous government might have seen this as a matter of thousands of people, over months," he said. "But now we are facing a matter of millions, over years." (Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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