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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:23
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quote:
Syrian Workers in Lebanon: The Other Occupation
by Gary C. Gambill
For the impoverished majority in Lebanon, the Syrian occupation is more than just an affront to national sovereignty, a barrier to free expression and an assault on personal liberties. To the university students who demonstrate regularly against the occupation on campuses throughout the country, it is all these things, but little more. Most of them will eventually escape the atmosphere of repression that has violated their sense of justice by emigrating abroad and joining their prosperous compatriots in the ever-growing Lebanese diaspora.
For the poor and downtrodden who have no escape from this land of lost opportunity, however, the Syrian occupation has a much more pernicious face. Their nemeses are not the Syrian soldiers who man checkpoints throughout the country, nor the plainclothes intelligence officers who monitor every public political gathering, but the 1.4 million penniless Syrian workers who have flooded into Lebanon in recent years and swept away the promise of a brighter future by virtually monopolizing many unskilled professions.
The Syrian Labor Force in Lebanon
The rapid influx of Syrian workers into Lebanon began shortly after Syria's October 1990 takeover of Beirut, which completed its military conquest of the country. Syrian workers had been a significant part of Lebanon's expatriot workforce prior to the outbreak of the civil war in 1975, but their presence had been strictly subject to Lebanese laws. In 1991, Lebanon's newly-installed puppet regime announced the official removal of most travel restrictions between the two countries. As Lebanon's post-war reconstruction boom gained steam in the early 1990's, a variety of subsequent agreements were implemented which made it possible for Syrians to cross over the border virtually undetected. By 1994, Syrian workers were a nearly ubiquitous presence in the streets of Beirut.
The most reliable estimate of the number of Syrian workers in Lebanon was calculated by Michel Murkos in two articles published by the influential Lebanese newspaper, Al-Nahar, in October 1994 and July 1995. Citing statistics obtained from Lebanon's General Security Directorate, Murkos indicated that between 1993-1995, the number of Syrians entering the country exceeded the number who departed Lebanon by 1,435,991.1 Economist Marwan Iskander, a former adviser to Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who has produced annual reports on the Lebanese economy for the past 18 years, has estimated that the number of Syrian workers in Lebanon remains about 1.4 million. Since these figures do not take into account undocumented migration into the country, they are considered to be conservative estimates. In addition, the estimated 35,000 Syrian soldiers stationed in Lebanon often have jobs to supplement their meager pay.
According to Lebanese economic experts, the Syrian labor force is roughly distributed as follows: construction (39%), seasonal agriculture (33%), municipal and sanitation jobs (20%), services, including street venders and taxi drivers (8%) and industry (2%).
The Impact on Lebanon
The influx of Syrian workers into Lebanon has tended to benefit commercial elites who own businesses that require unskilled labor. Since Syria's per capita GNP is less than a third of Lebanon's,2 Syrian laborers have been readily willing to work for wages that are extremely low by Lebanese standards. A Syrian taxi driver in Beirut, for example, can earn up to $200 per month--around twice the salary of a university professor in Damascus. Lebanese employers prefer to hire unskilled Syrian workers over their Lebanese counterparts because the transaction is off the books, allowing them to avoid paying the required minimum wage, evade the social security system and demand long working hours.
While this small strata of elites has profited immensely from the virtually unlimited supply of abnormally cheap labor, working class Lebanese have suffered tremendously from the entry of Syrian workers. Over the last several years, the unemployment rate has hovered around 30% for the Lebanese labor force as a whole, and is probably higher for unskilled workers, who cannot compete with their Syrian counterparts. Those who manage to get jobs are often forced to accept low wages and dismal working conditions, as well as forgo health insurance and other benefits they once enjoyed.
According to the results of a study released last month by the Development Studies and Projects Center, Lebanon's labor force is expected to grow by an average of 2.3% in the next decade, compared to an average of 1.5% worldwide.3 Lebanon's dismal economy will have difficulty absorbing this growth.
In addition, the presence of Syrian workers hurts the overall economy because very little of the money they earn remains in Lebanon. Unlike Lebanese workers, Syrian laborers are not required to pay taxes. Unlike other foreign workers, Syrians do not have to pay for work permits. According to Lebanese economist Bassam Hashem, the Syrian labor force deprives the Lebanese treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars per year in permit fees and taxes.4
Moreover, Syrian workers live in squalid conditions, often sharing a single room with several of their compatriots, so as to save the bulk of their income and send it to their families in Syria. Syrian workers remit around $4.3 billion from Lebanon to Syria every year. The Assad regime has worked carefully to discourage Syrian workers from spending their wages in Lebanon. It is illegal, for example, for workers to send Lebanese-made consumer durables back to their families in Syria.
Perhaps the most detrimental impact of the Syrian worker presence is demographic. One Lebanese scholar has called the influx of Syrian workers into Lebanon "nothing short of a movement toward Syrian colonization of Lebanon."5 Syrian nationals constitute at least one-third of Lebanon's resident population. Since most Syrian workers are between the ages of eighteen and fifty, there are probably more able-bodied adults Syrians in Lebanon than there are Lebanese. In 1994, under pressure from Syria, the Lebanese regime granted citizenship to over 200,000 Syrians resident in the country. Many of these newly-naturalized citizens were registered in the electoral districts of pro-Syrian political elites, such as former Interior Minister Michel Murr, in order to consolidate Syrian authority over the Lebanese political system. |
http://www.meib.org/articles/0102_l1.htm
There's more in the link. That's from 2001, what is the situation now?
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16-03-2005 03:07
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