90,000 Syrians may have entered Lebanon since Assad ousted

It is believed that more than 90,000 Syrians have entered Lebanon since the Assad regime was toppled in Damascus on Sunday, as some say they fear revenge attacks and long-term instability.

A lightning rebel offensive led by the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham group ousted the Ba’athist regime which ruled Syria for over five decades, after a 13-year war that has ravaged Syria.

On Sunday morning when Lebanese authorities reopened the Masnaa border crossing, after closing it the previous night while rebels overran Homs and Damascus, thousands of cars began pouring into Lebanon from Syria, overwhelming the border post.

The absence of Syrian security personnel on the other side of the border worsened the chaos, prompting Lebanese security forces to tighten control, which had slowed the processing of entries.

Many of those reportedly came from predominantly Shia town of Sayyida Zaynab, a southern suburb of Damascus and home to a shrine of the same name.

Local broadcaster Al Jadeed spoke to many of them waiting to enter at Masnaa. Some had expressed fears that they would be subject to attacks by certain extremist elements, while others said they were just waiting for things to calm down before returning.

HTS had assured all minority communities in Syria that they had nothing to fear, vowing to protect them and their properties.

While there are no official figures, authorities in Lebanon estimate around 90,000 Syrians have crossed from both legal and illegal border crossings. The porous border between the two countries has long been an easy smuggling route for traffickers.

Security sources told Al-Akhbar newspaper that “the official number of those entering Lebanon from Syria does not exceed 7,000 displaced persons, at a rate of 1,000 to 1,200 displaced persons per day since last Sunday, and all of them meet the legal requirements, such as possessing residency permits, or having humanitarian conditions, or for whom Lebanon is considered a transit country.”

The sources pointed out that “these numbers are the official data available to the [security] agencies, and they do not include thousands of displaced people who entered through illegal crossings, and some estimates put their number at 90,000.”

It added that “the majority of them are of [religious] minorities who were residing in regime-controlled areas, such as in the vicinity of the Sayyida Zaynab shrine, and the Homs and Hama governorates, up to the Lebanese border, and they decided to leave, and some of them spoke of being subjected to threats, while others denied it, but they have concerns.”

The Lebanese Shia Hezbollah group fought alongside other Iran-backed Shia militias to defend Assad’s regime throughout the war. Many had been positioned in Sayyida Zaynab, saying they were there to protect the important Shia Muslim shrine, belonging to the granddaughter of Islam’s prophet Muhammad.

Hezbollah’s role in the fighting has created massive discontent among Syrians, who say the group is complicit in crimes hand in hand with the regime, including forcing people from their homes, occupying their towns and killing civilians. 

With the largest citizen to refugee per capita in the world, around 2 million Syrians are residing in Lebanon – about a third of the country’s total population – having escaped the violence back home. The UNHCR says it has less than a million people on its records.

They had long avoided returning, in fear of being arrested, kidnapped, or even killed by Assad’s forces.

Some of them have already expressed their willingness to return to Syria in the coming weeks or months, but many say they will need some time as their homes were destroyed.