When Blame Backfires

Syrian Refugees and Citizen Grievances in Jordan and Lebanon

Anne Marie Baylouny

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501751523
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Nahostpolitik

The recent influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan and Lebanon has stimulated domestic political action against these countries' governments. This is the dramatic argument at the heart of Anne Marie Baylouny's When Blame Backfires.

Baylouny examines the effects on Jordan and Lebanon of hosting huge numbers of Syrian refugees. How has the populace reacted to the real and perceived negative effects of the refugees? In thought-provoking analysis, Baylouny shows how the demographic changes that result from mass immigration put stress on existing problems in these two countries, worsening them to the point of affecting daily lives. One might expect that, as a result, refugees and minorities would become the focus of citizen anger. But as When Blame Backfires demonstrates, this is not always the case.

What Baylouny exposes, instead, is that many of the problems that might be associated with refugees are in fact endemic to the normal routine of citizens' lives. The refugee crisis exacerbated an already dire situation rather than created it, and Jordanians and Lebanese started to protest not only against the presence of refugees but against the incompetence and corruption of their own governments as well.

From small-scale protests about goods and public services, citizens progressed to organized and formal national movements calling for economic change and rights to public services not previously provided. This dramatic shift in protest and political discontent was, Baylouny shows, the direct result of the arrival of Syrian refugees.

1

BEFORE THE SYRIAN CRISIS

As the Syrian refugees fled from their warring country, they entered neighboring countries that were already unable to provide adequate infrastructure and services to their existing populations. Populations in these countries regularly turned to the private sector to provide the social services the central state could not. Further, the Syrians were not the first refugees to arrive in Jordan and Lebanon; some earlier refugee groups had settled without negative political repercussions, while others caused large changes in national politics and disruptions in security. Citizens were well aware of their countries’ deficiencies, and had sporadically mobilized for changes. Mobilization was ineffective, however, due to the regimes’ use of political divisions and history of scapegoating to blame unpopular groups.

Prior to receiving the Syrians, the Lebanese had absorbed the Armenians, refused to incorporate most Palestinians, dealt with their own domestic population movements due to a civil war, and coped with some Iraqis. Jordan had incorporated most of the Palestinians, and complained repeatedly, first about the burden of hosting those Palestinians, then about the returning Palestinians from the first Gulf War, and finally about the Iraqis who fled in the 1990s and 2000s. The Armenians had come to Lebanon (and Syria) early in the 1900s, fleeing Turkey in large numbers. This different ethnic, religious, and linguistic group has coexisted peacefully since that time and remains in Lebanon. After independence, Jordan and Lebanon experienced two main groups of refugees prior to the Syrians: the Palestinians arrived in 1948 and 1967, and the Iraqis in the 1990s and beginning again around 2006. The result with the Palestinians was far from peaceful, and their presence affected the trajectories of both countries. Later, two waves of generally unarmed Iraqis went to both countries, more to Jordan than Lebanon. At the same time, Lebanon had been dealing with its own ongoing displacement crisis from the long civil war that ended in 1990. Lebanese were displaced throughout the country as they sought safety from active violence and threats from diverse sectarian militias. All this historical background informs the reception of the Syrians and locals’ interpretations of their effects. In addition to hosting refugees, both states grapple with domestic opposition movements. Until recently those oppositions did not attract enough of the population to constitute regime threats. Even the era of the Arab Uprisings was tame in these states. These uprisings were small but secular in Lebanon, and short-lived and reformist in Jordan. In this chapter I review these countries’ history with refugees and mobilizing prior to the arrival of the Syrians. I also review the status of the state as a referent for social demands, and its ability to respond to those demands in both countries.

The States and Infrastructure Problems

Jordan and Lebanon each host more Syrian refugees per citizen than any other countries. The two states have diverse capacities and regimes and differ in significant ways. Jordan is an electoral monarchy (monarchy with elections for parliament), while Lebanon is a consociational democracy (based on power-sharing among different religious groups). Jordan has centralized effective power, and some state institutions are capable, but the country lives by foreign aid. Lebanon’s numerous and competing actors make centralized governance difficult. Its institutions are understaffed, underfinanced, cumbersome to negotiate, and generally dysfunctional. Its foreign alliances are split between the different domestic factions.

The similarities between the two countries are more striking for this book’s purposes. Neither state has been able to fully employ its population or effectively provide basic services for citizens, and their economies merely hobble along. State corruption is a problem in both. Lebanon’s rating on Transparency International’s corruption index puts it near the bottom (143 out of 180).¹ Jordan’s ranking on the same list is significantly better (59 out of 180), but the country has had some recent highly publicized scandals implicating members of the royal family. Public perception of corruption thus differs from that ranking. Corruption and the embezzlement of funds by political elites has been a hot topic for the last few years in both countries. Using identity and political divisions to rule and to distract the populace from effective regime criticism has been a way of life for political elites in Jordan and Lebanon. Divisions are political and sectarian in Lebanon, but based on ethnic or national origin in Jordan. Jordan’s political use of the Jordanian-Palestinian distinction runs deep. The states have made a business of attributing systemic problems to other groups: Palestinians, Israelis, Iraqis, jihadis, Ba’athists, Communists, and now Syrians have all been blamed for domestic troubles.

Both states have used social groups as the basis for the provision of important welfare services to their populations. For both clientelism is instrumental in accessing a higher quantity or quality of welfare and social services, but the basis for clientelism varies between the two. In Jordan kinship and tribe are the operative calling cards for help, while in Lebanon sect or religious institutions and political party serve as the entrée to state services. Connections (wasta), or patronage, are used for state services and employment, particularly employment with the state, which is central to the economies of both countries. State employment provides access to privileged goods and health insurance. In Lebanon, services increase during elections and political campaigns.² Along with the prevalence of clientelism, in each country the same elite families and individuals tend to continually hold power. This has led to a popular confluence of the terms “state,” “regime,” and “government,” since they are constituted by the same individuals and families. Furthering this confusion, Jordan’s king has used the shifting or replacing of government figures to ameliorate popular anger.

The public sector in Jordan is about double the size that it is in Lebanon.³ Jordanians’ relationship to the state is more obvious than that of the Lebanese, since the state is higher in capacity and more united, being under a single ultimate ruler. Yet Lebanese are no less dependent on the state, particularly in the middle and lower classes. Lebanon’s public sector is important socially for the benefits it provides, especially to public employees, notably in the security services and teaching professions.⁴ The Lebanese state is an everyday inevitability, from the most visible security services (the military fighting extremists dominates the news) to the water and electric bills people must pay. This ordinary occurrence of the state has been missed by scholars, due to the power of nonstate actors and the incompetence of public services. In fact, numerous state institutions provide aid in Lebanon, albeit through the medium of sectarianism. Lebanon provides aid through the Council for the South (mainly for electricity), the Ministry of the Displaced (from the Lebanese civil war), the High Relief Committee (which coordinates NGOs and public aid agencies), the Ministry of Social Affairs, and the Ministry of Public Health, among others. The Ministry of Public Health subcontracts with NGOs in addition to providing its own services, aiding citizens with health bills. The Social Development Ministry and the Ministry of Public Health mainly operate through subcontracts with NGOs and state Development Service Centers. About 60 percent of the Ministry of Social Affairs’ yearly budget of $60 million went to NGO contracts.⁵ A new generation of scholars, not focused on the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990), when the state was neglected as barely an afterthought, have begun to examine Lebanese concepts of and relations to their state.⁶ The omnipresence of sectarianism, on close examination, is shown to work partly through the state.⁷ Everyday life is filled with state encounters: obtaining documents and permits, and dealing with security services (police, General Security, and for the numerous roadblocks, military). Maintaining food security is another expectation of the Lebanese state, some have argued.⁸

These countries have long-standing infrastructure problems that complicate the provision of basic goods: mainly water in Jordan and electricity in Lebanon. Electricity problems in Lebanon, in part a legacy of the civil war, are so bad that anyone able to afford it has a private generator, or more often a subscription to one.⁹ At regular intervals the state electricity shuts off and generators take over, so smoothly that in richer areas the changeover is barely noticeable. Signs in hotel elevators state the precise times when electricity will shut down and inform riders to expect only a momentary delay in elevator service.¹⁰ Still, the responsibility of electricity provision is clearly associated with the state. The coming and going of electricity is described as “the arrival of the state” and the “exit of the state,” respectively.¹¹ Lebanon’s unsafe tap water forces households to purchase their own water, imposing an added expense. Garbage collection is a problem, and landfills have turned into “mountains of trash” (jibal al-zibaleh) scattered throughout the country. Roads are not maintained, and potholes can be five feet wide.¹²

Strong regional disparities characterize both economies, with most economic activities and services concentrated in the capital cities. Life outside Amman and Beirut, where there are few services and jobs, differs significantly from life within the cities. Both countries’ economies are dominated by services and remittances (and international aid in the case of Jordan), and both countries have few resources and more people than they can employ. A large percentage of workers are self-employed or in informal work.¹³ The countries’ economies have not fared well, according to macro indicators, either. Lebanon in 2010 had 27 percent poverty, using their own poverty line, in a population of five million.¹⁴ In Jordan’s population of more than six million people, 14.4 percent were poor in the same year.¹⁵ Lebanon’s unemployment rate before the Syrian war was 6.4 percent, while Jordan’s in 2011 was 13 percent, conservatively.¹⁶ Both governments are in debt. Jordan owed about 70 percent of its GDP, while Lebanon had to repay about 130 percent of its GDP when Syria’s civil war began.¹⁷ Jordan is dependent on aid and remittances, and Lebanon relies heavily on remittances.

Historical Experiences with Refugees

Jordan’s and Lebanon’s histories with refugees differ, and each country’s policy varies by the specific refugee population.¹⁸ The countries felt the impact of Palestinian refugees most heavily. Between 900,000 and 1 million Palestinians became refugees with the founding of Israel and settled primarily in Jordan and Lebanon, with fewer in Syria.¹⁹ Around 70,000 went to the East Bank or present-day Jordan, while the bulk of the refugees went to the West Bank or Gaza. The 280,000 Palestinians displaced from the new Israeli state to the West Bank would later be under the administrative control of Jordan, as it absorbed this territory until its disengagement with the Palestinian territories in the late 1980s. Approximately 100,000 refugees went to Lebanon, 75,000 to Syria, and a few thousand to Iraq.²⁰ The Palestinians were armed militarily, which led to concern in both Jordan and Lebanon that their weapons would turn against their host states or that their actions would draw the states into a dangerous and doomed conflict with Israel. Their political ideas were also threatening to these regimes, as they leaned distinctly left economically and socially.

Palestinians found the best situation in Jordan for personal security, freedom of movement, activism, and employment, because most were granted citizenship. Syria was the second-most preferable, and Palestinians were worst off in Lebanon. The refugees and the host states were both, for the most part, adamant about repatriation, so Palestinians resisted permanent settlement. The effects of the Palestinians were distinct in each host country, although Palestinians were involved in violent conflicts in both. Demographics mattered. In Syria the impacts were not identifiable, since their numbers were relatively small. The Palestinians came to form a vibrant part of Jordanian society, while being rejected in Lebanon. In Jordan, after initial PLO organizing and violence against the Palestinians, most Palestinians settled into citizenship, albeit receiving lesser political status. Palestinians form a minority of elected representatives due to purposive, structural features of Jordan’s electoral laws. Fears of Palestinian dominance by East Banker Jordanians continue, demonstrated in fights between soccer teams and current intense animosity against Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian descent.

The Palestinian situation reflects the larger history of refugees in these countries. From Armenians to Iraqis and now Syrians, the experiences of these states with refugees depended on the degree of impact each group made on the projects of state-building and national consolidation. Lebanon allowed the Armenians, of a different language, culture, and diverse religion from the arguable majority of L...