Syrian refugees settle en masse in Lebanon, overwhelming government

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• IVETTE FELICIANO:

  Just one day before ISIS militants carried out the Paris attacks, a double suicide bombing by ISIS killed 43 people in a residential neighborhood in Lebanon's capital of Beirut.

  Remco Andersen, the Middle East correspondent for the Dutch newspaper "De Volkskrant" reported from the scene. I spoke to him by Skype.

• REMCO ANDERSEN:

  What we saw were local youth, Lebanese youth, dragging away, I saw at least three cases of this happening, Syrians who happened to be in the neighborhood. And when I asked the guy why, he said, you know, the people who make that bomb go off are ISIS, and ISIS comes from Syria, so every Syrian is now at target.

• IVETTE FELICIANO:

  Anderson says such retaliation and scapegoating is common after bombings inside Lebanon. There have been more than a dozen such attacks in the past two years.

• REMCO ANDERSEN:

  These are the kinds of things that happen after a bombing like that, and it just shows how tensions and resentment between different groups here are only going to increase.

• REMCO ANDERSEN:

  This small country of four-and-a-half million people has the world's largest concentration of Syrian refugees per capita. More than a million refugees, which means one in every four people in Lebanon is from Syria.

• AMAL MUDALLALI:

  It's like the equivalent of having 80 million refugees come to the United States.

• IVETTE FELICIANO:

  Amal Mudallali, an advisor to Lebanon's former Prime Minister and now a scholar at the Wilson Center, says the refugee influx has strained a cash-strapped government that has been unable to pick up garbage regularly or keep the electricity on.

• AMAL MUDALLALI:

  They came to an area that already has an infrastructure that cannot handle even its own population. This is a big big problem for Lebanon, because Lebanon is a small country. Lebanon has limited resources.

• IVETTE FELICIANO:

  Lebanon doesn't have Syrian refugee camps, so most arriving families live in dilapidated single room apartments and makeshift tent communities.

• AMAL MUDALLALI:

  This problem is at the breaking point.

• IVETTE FELICIANO:

  Mudallali says the anti-refugee rhetoric now coming from Europe and the United States could make the problem worse for Lebanon if international aid dries up, and the refugees have no place else to go.

• AMAL MUDALLALI:

  This sends a message to the region that the international community does not want to hold its responsibility and don't want to help with this problem this is a big problem for the region to accept, especially for the people who cannot handle it anymore.

• IVETTE FELICIANO:

  Mudallali and reporters in Lebanon describe the government is as "dysfunctional" and ill-equipped to handle the refugees. Lebanon has not had a president for more than a year or held parliamentary elections for six years.

• MATTHEW FISHER:

  The Lebanese population has been tolerant of all of this, I think, amazingly tolerant, considering how many refugees are here.

• IVETTE FELICIANO:

  Matthew Fisher, a reporter for Canada's National Post, says Lebanon has backed away from its open-door border policy with Syria, tightening its borders with Syria and suspending registrations for new refugees.

• MATTHEW FISHER:

  The ones in the Middle East are very poor, they don't have the money to pay smugglers to go to Europe. These really are hardscrabble folk who have no other options.

• IVETTE FELICIANO:

  Fisher says he's observed friction between Lebanese citizens and Syrian refugees who are willing to work for a-quarter of the pay a Lebanese would. He says many refugees say they fled persecution by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

• MATTHEW FISHER:

  I've met firemen who said they had to leave, because they refused to fire water cannons full of acid onto protesters in Damascus.

• IVETTE FELICIANO:

  With a huge backlog of asylum requests in Europe, the Paris attacks may leave more Syrians in Lebanon in limbo.

• MATTHEW FISHER:

  Every single refugee said to me: this changes the game. We are already in a very difficult position now we are in a worse position. The Lebanese are going to regard us as terrorists.

  Any place that we might like to resettle in, in North America and in Europe, will now have another reason not to be generous and allow us in.