DEIR AL-AHMAR, Lebanon: Abu Ahmad, a Syrian refugee with a toothless smile, sucked on a cigarette at the edge of the crude tented settlement he now calls home. “In Raqqa, they would have cut my fingers off for this,” he said. “For this, I would be a kaffir [apostate],” he said, inhaling deeply. Abu Ahmad and approximately 400 other refugees fled Raqqa after ISIS took over the town and implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law. Now spread across fifteen camps on the outskirts of Deir al-Ahmar in North Bekaa, the refugees said that while the butchery of ISIS is well behind them, they have a new, even less discriminate foe in Lebanon: the elements.
“We’re scared of the cold and the rain,” said Taher, as the mountain winds whipped up the corners of his red checkered kiffeyeh. When the rain begins to fall in a few weeks’ time, the fallow field where they have set up a makeshift camp will turn to mud.
“When the rain comes, we’ll be lost. The ground will turn to mud up to our knees,” said Abu Ahmad.
While ill-prepared for the cold, the refugees agreed that even the harshest winter in Lebanon is preferable to ISIS rule in Raqqa.
“Here, there is rain and cold, but there you’ll get your head cut off,” said Abu Khaled. He described how ISIS had mounted a human head on a pole in the center of the town, threatening anyone who moved it with the same fate.
Ali, a wiry young man who was acting as a camp leader, said he was arrested by ISIS patrols after he was caught walking around during prayer time.
He said he was regularly beaten during the 10 days he spent in prison. “They beat me at dawn and at sunset, and forced me to read the Quran all day,” Ali told The Daily Star. His captors, he said, were not Syrian.
According to Abu Ahmad, Islamists from all over the globe now control Raqqa. “There were French, Americans and British people there. All sorts of Europeans,” he said.
Ahmad, a stooped, older man, said ISIS militants had arrested his 12-year-old son for not carrying an ID. Ahmad paid more than $300 to have him released. “If I had not paid, he would have been lost,” said Ahmad. “They were trying to get him to fight with them.”
Women said that they had been forced to wear niqabs and gloves in public or their husbands would be beaten or fined.
“If you’re not wearing it [niqab] they’ll bring in your husband or brother or beat him,” said Hourieh, a woman in one of the camps.
Taher said he was stopped by an ISIS patrol while riding with his wife on his motorcycle, because her face was not fully covered. “They gave me a ticket,” he said.
But Taher, like many refugees in the camp, left his wife and some of his children behind in Raqqa.
“If everybody leaves the house, ISIS comes in and they’ll take everything,” explained Abu Ahmad.
Under ISIS, women rarely leave their homes; they are not permitted to do so without a close male relative. “We just stayed in the house,” said Mariam, sitting on a mattress in her makeshift tent. “They didn’t let us do anything.”
Many of the men are trying to earn money picking crops in Deir al-Ahmar to support their families in Raqqa. They say they opted to come to Lebanon, instead of Turkey, because some had previously worked as seasonal agricultural laborers in the Bekaa Valley
Still, they worry for their family members still living under ISIS rule. The militant group, several refugees said, launches rockets at Syrian warplanes from crowded residential neighborhoods with little regard for the casualties inflicted when the regime jets inevitably return fire.
“When the warplanes come to hit [ISIS] fighters, where are they? They’re in front of our houses,” said Mohammad, another Raqqa native.
“They never launch attacks [against the regime] from military bases. They launch attacks from civilian neighborhoods,” said Abu Ahmed, nodding in agreement.
Ultimately, most refugees say dire economic circumstances in Raqqa, rather than ISIS brutality, forced them to leave the town.
The Raqqa they describe, where water, electricity and food are in short supply, contrasts starkly with the propaganda videos ISIS circulates online which strive to show the city as the fully functioning capital of their so-called caliphate.
“There was very little work, and we didn’t have enough money to get food,” said Taher.
“You couldn’t even buy bread. The price of bread quadrupled,” agreed Abu Ahmad.
The prospect of ISIS crossing the border into Lebanon also worries some of the refugees who have been following the news in Arsal closely.
ISIS is currently holding several soldiers hostage on the outskirts of Arsal and has already beheaded two.
“We’re trying to get away from them,” Mariam said. “Now we’re scared they’ll come here.”
The refugees expressed skepticism that airstrikes, executed this week by the U.S. in cooperation with the Gulf states, against ISIS targets in Raqqa would lead to a long-term solution.
“We support anything that will end the war. We just want to go home,” Abu Ahmad said.
“We just want peace,” Ali said.
The coming winter weighs much heavier on their minds than ISIS or U.S. airstrikes. “We have no wood, we have no roofing, there’s no water, there’s nothing,” Ali said.
“The rain, it will soak us right through,” he said, pointing to the thin, permeable fabric which constituted his roof.
“We need things to cover our roofs,” said Bashir, a Syrian refugee who manages one of the camps.
“When it rains, everything will be destroyed: our mattresses, our clothing,” Abu Ahmad said. “The rain could start any day now.”
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