AFTER government forces burned their family to death, Muhammad and Mukhtar, two brothers in their early twenties, fled Syria. Since then they have got by doing odd building jobs in the Lebanese port of Tripoli, while so far unsuccessfully applying for resettlement. Now, two years later, they are hoping to join the exodus to Europe if they can raise enough money to pay smugglers for a passage. “There is nothing for us here,” says Mukhtar.
Over the past few summers—when the paths are clear and the seas calm—Syria has churned out people. But this year has seen the greatest outflow yet. The latest, as yet unpublished, UN figures, obtained by this newspaper, show that Syria’s population has shrunk to just 16.6m, down from a pre-war level of around 22m. With 4m UN-registered refugees abroad, at least 1m more unregistered and 7m internally displaced people, more than half the country’s population has been forced to move. UN officials think the number could be significantly higher than that, since estimates of the pre-war population vary widely. Up to 250,000 people have died.
The Middle East has witnessed mass movement...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1FhUJMh
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