‘No one can guarantee our safety’: Syrians stuck in squalid exile

Despite appalling conditions in Lebanese camps, most refugees say it is unsafe to go home

In knee-deep snow and biting cold, 10-year-old Saleh Qarqour had almost finished shovelling a path to the tent that had been his family’s home for the past six years. Elders and children huddled around a heater inside. Chimney smoke wafted from the town of Arsal in the valley below.

Over the ridge behind them was the Syrian frontier, from which the Qarqour family and nearly everyone else in this Lebanese border town had fled. Their homes ever since had been makeshift tents, their frugal lives sustained by aid and goodwill, which, on this frozen ledge above Lebanon, was fast running out.

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