LARNACA, Cyprus: Just as during the 1975-1990 civil war that ravaged their country, hundreds of Lebanese families are turning to neighbouring Cyprus to escape the miseries of everyday life back home.
Short-haul flights from Beirut to Larnaca, barely a 25-minute hop away, have been busy for months ferrying in Lebanese for whom their crisis-hit country with its dire shortages has become unliveable. “I’ve had to leave my country and my parents to try to secure a future for my children,” said Nanor Abachian, 30, emerging from the airport on the island’s south coast with her husband, their two children and seven heavy suitcases.
They leave behind a bankrupt country where daily 22-hour power cuts have become the norm and shortages have hit daily necessities, from fuel and gas to medicine and bread.
Since the start of the crisis in 2019, several thousand Lebanese have emigrated, many of them to Cyprus. There is no official data on numbers, especially as many Lebanese hold second passports.
Lebanon’s Ambassador to Cyprus, Claude el Hajal, said the number of families resettled on the island has seen “a significant increase” especially since the devastating August 4, 2020 explosion in Beirut’s port that killed over 200 people.
In the 1980s, at the height of the civil war, about 100,000 Lebanese families fled to Cyprus, Hajal said. However, many returned after the conflict. During the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Cyprus served as a base for the evacuation of almost 60,000 civilians from Lebanon.
Abachian said a “feeling of insecurity” was the main motivation for their flight abroad. “We are living in the unknown… My children have no future in Lebanon,” she said.
Once in Larnaca, she settled with her family at a friend’s house, waiting to rent an apartment near the school where the children have been enrolled. George Obeid, in his forties, also opted for Cyprus for the sake of his children’s schooling.
“There is no hope for the school year in Lebanon,” he said, citing the power cuts and fuel shortages that are crippling school services and activities. — AFP
