Jordan Set to Open First Refugee Camp for Syrians

Written by Abdullah Omar
Thursday, February 16, 2012

[Amman] Jordan is putting the final touches on a refugee camp being set up near the border with Syria to house its share of the thousands of Syrians fleeing their homes out of fear of being caught up in the ongoing violence between President Bashar Al-Asad’s troops and opposition forces.

In the northern city of Sarhan, near Mafraq, a large plot of land has been paved; and wiring for electricity and piping for water installed in anticipation of arriving refugees.

The camp, under round-the-clock police guard, is the first in the kingdom and in the Arab region since the uprising against the Al-Asad regime began eleven months ago. Neighbors Iraq and Lebanon remain undecided over the developing situation in Syria and are so far refusing to establish refugee camps inside their borders.

But Jordan has already allowed thousands of refugees to enter and has provided them with needed care. Until now, the burden of supporting the unexpected guests from Syria has fallen on local communities in the border areas that have provided food, shelter and medical care to the refugees. Children of the Syrian refugees have even been allowed to attend public schools for free. The new camps, set up with support from UNHCR -- the United Nations refugee agency -- will lift the burden from the locals.

According to Ahmed Emian, secretary general of the Hashemite Charity Foundation, the camp will be open and ready to receive its residents shortly. “We have set up the camp in terms of paving the ground, putting electricity and providing it with sanitation and water,” he told The Media Line. “We will be opening the camp next week, or at latest by the end of the month,” he added.

For nearly eleven months into the anti-Asad uprising, and despite the rising number of Syrians seeking the safety of its borders, pro-Western Jordan resisted the temptation of setting up camps. Observers and western diplomats say Jordan, possibly the most experienced in the region in terms of hosting refugees, waited for a political decision from higher authorities and its allies before erecting tents on the borders.

At the start of the uprising last year, Jordan imposed a media blackout on the presence of refugees in order to avoid angering Syria and its strong neighbors. But now, a number of philanthropic groups have been given the nod to provide for the needs of refugees in certain areas, including the border, Amman and as far south as the city of Ma’an.

Estimates of the actual number of asylum seekers vary. The government says nearly 5000 have entered the kingdom since the uprising began in Syria in March 2011, while estimates offered by the philanthropic groups put the number of asylum seekers in the tens of thousands. Yet, the UN-agency UNHCR pegs the number of registered refugees at about 3,000 – less than the government estimate but twice the number it reported only one month ago, according to Jamal Arafat, chief representative of UNHCR in Amman.

He told The Media Line that no camps have been set up yet, suggesting that such a move is more of a political choice than a logistical one. “We are ready to open refugee camps, but we do not see any need for that yet,” he said.

Abu Ahmed is a Syrian activist fleeing from the city of Harak, a hotbed of anti-Asad protests in Deraa. He arrived in Mafraq three weeks ago after a long chase by Syrian security forces. Abu Ahmed currently lives in a mosque in Mafraq, awaiting accommodations for his family. “I fled without my family or anybody. I crossed illegally into Jordan and now I live in this mosque,” he told The Media line in a telephone interview. Abu Ahmed said many Syrians want to flee but they are unable to do so because of the heavy security procedures and fear of arrest on the borders. Jordan has not broken-off relations with Damascus and has said it will not ask the Syrian ambassador leave even though Syrian ambassadors posted in the oil rich Gulf States have been expelled.

Privately, officials say the kingdom will be hurt in case it severs diplomatic ties with its much larger neighbor, and prefers to keep diplomatic channels open. In the meantime, residents of Deraa warn that the Syrian army has intensified its patrols along the long border in order to prevent a mass influx of refugees and to stop activists wanted by the regime in Syria from fleeing to Jordan.

But arriving refugees escaping the continued shelling in areas in the Huran region say it will be extremely difficult for Al-Asad’s forces to stop local residents from leaving.

Source: The Media Line.
Link: http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=34442.