'Returning the favour': Thousands of Lebanese nationals welcomed in Iraq as Israel's war escalates

When Israel started attacking Gaza in October last year, Lebanese native Dalia Hourani said, “We knew we were next.”

But it was only after Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed on September 27  that she says she started planning her exit.

The 42-year-old mother of two from southern Lebanon said she has learnt what the “copy and paste” speeches of Israeli politicians mean now — especially when looking at the brutality of Israel's war in Gaza. 

Coming from a privileged household and fortunate enough to have family elsewhere, as well as the funds, Dalia arrived in Baghdad in early October via a regular flight with her two Filipino nannies in tow — for whom getting a visa was the most difficult part, she noted — and her dog.

She bears scars on her face from the 2020 Beirut port blast even after multiple reconstructive surgeries.

“I am now kind of done with the whole region. People [elsewhere] are living lives that do not involve war,” she said.

Lebanese officials estimate that Israeli attacks on Lebanon over the past year have killed more than 2,400 people.

Iraq is hosting thousands of Lebanese nationals who have fled in recent weeks since Israeli attacks intensified late last month. Iraq has facilitated entry for those fleeing and the country does not require them to have passports.

In an October 5 press conference in the Iraqi capital attended by The New Arab, interior ministry spokesman Miqdad Miri stated that over 5,000 Lebanese had entered the country through the Baghdad and Najaf airports. 

Meanwhile, larger families with enough money for the trip and a vehicle have entered through the al-Qaim border crossing with Syria.

Once past the myriad Syrian government checkpoints – with some families revealing that bribes were demanded there – and following many hours of driving through the desert, Iraqis, connected with the shrines in Karbala, assisted the fleeing families in Syria’s eastern city of Albu Kamal.

‘Every home in Karbala is open to the Lebanese’

Faded billboards showing the faces of Iraqi ‘martyrs’ of various battles and wars line the dusty highway running south from Baghdad to Karbala.

An advisor to the general secretary of the Imam Hussein shrine, Fadhil Awz, told The New Arab that the shrine continues to send medicine to Lebanon and that “there are many shrine units in Syria prepared to meet those arriving from Lebanon.”

He noted that there is no exact data available on how many Lebanese ‘guests’ are in the city since many Iraqi families are hosting them without coordination with any official body. However, the shrine has “rented entire hotels for those coming from Lebanon” and provides them three meals a day.

“We were under fierce attack from the Islamic State group (IS),” he noted, and “our Lebanese brothers helped us in the fight. That’s why we are returning the favour.”

In a taxi taken by The New Arab with two Lebanese men in the city, the driver refused payment on hearing their accent and asked whether they needed work and would be willing to go to Najaf to work in a restaurant. Phone numbers were exchanged.

“I have been to the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, a lot of places. I have never seen such generosity as I have here from Iraqis,” a Lebanese man in his fifties told The New Arab.

Adapting to new lifestyles 

In a home lent to them in the city, members of Abdulamir’s family and others who travelled with them sat on the floor showing The New Arab photos of their life in Beirut and the Beqaa Valley.

The home in the Beqaa has been destroyed, they said, while “we aren’t sure what happened” to the one in Beirut, located in the heavily targeted southern suburbs of the city.

An older woman repeatedly asked where they could get money, her kohl-rimmed eyes staring in distrust. Her male relative meanwhile answered a phone call from an interior ministry official, responding confidently and gratefully that they had more than enough food and didn’t need anything.

They were escorted to Karbala by “military vehicles” from the time they arrived on the other side of the Syria-Iraq border, the man says and lent the home by city residents.

The man asked that his last name not be used to prevent any future repercussions for him or his family. Multiple members of his family do not have passports — he adds he is unclear on how to get one and the money required for these official documents.

A young man in his teens wearing a pendant with Hezbollah insignia says he would have joined the group to fight if he had been old enough. His father stresses that none of his family has ever “been involved with any party or armed group.” But they all agree that Hezbollah and Hassan Nasrallah did important things for the country.

However, Abdulamir added, “I want my son to become an engineer, my daughter a doctor. We don’t want war. I’m old enough to have seen war. We want peace. I will go back tomorrow if the war ends. We all would,” he said.

The family had travelled in two vehicles overland from a northern border crossing since “the regular crossing closer to Beirut was being targeted” and experienced incessant demands for bribes by Syrian military manning frequent checkpoints on the way towards the Iraqi border.

When they had no money left to give, one man said, he offered his wife’s wedding ring.

Another member of the family wistfully showed photos of her in the life she said she wanted back: riding together on a scooter with her long hair blowing in the wind in Beirut and posing in a tight white sleeveless dress.

Here in Karbala, she noted she has to wear an abaya and headscarf when she goes out.

Lebanon ‘too small to handle mass displacement’

“We have seen successive refugee flows in the region — obviously in the modern era since 1948 — that have had a significant impact on the political and social order of the region,” Drew Mikhael, a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, noted to The New Arab.

“We have seen one-third of the Lebanese population — including Iraqis, Syrians, Palestinians, and foreign domestic workers — displaced at this point. This is a huge wave of human beings moving throughout a very small country,” Drew added. 

“I don’t think anyone can genuinely predict the extent of the effect this will have on the place they end up in. Mainly because a lot of that will depend on the hosting state’s capacity to absorb, integrate, and facilitate inclusion in labour, economic, and political terms,” he noted.

"This is a population of people with more global ties, be it to Australia, the US, or France, and so I don’t know if long term a large number of Lebanese will settle in another Arab state or regional state that will shift the social order. However, we are currently seeing a significant shift within Lebanon that might start to cause tensions within certain municipalities that are already overburdened.”

But like all who have been forced to flee from their homeland, they all just dream of going back home.

"I can't stop dreaming about the view from my balcony. Every day I would wake up [and see] those green mountains, that blue sky," Dalia says. 

“What breaks my heart the most is that they are destroying our crops, our land, our soil... Do they really think phosphorus stops at borders?” she questions angrily. 

“Now, every day I wake up and I look at the news and see a grey Beirut and a sunny Tel Aviv.”

Shelly Kittleson is a journalist specialising in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Her work has been published in several international, US and Italian media outlets.

Follow her on X: @shellykittleson