Letter from Mideast: When Washington cuts aid after fueling crisis — the struggle of Syrian refugees in Lebanon

Years of displacement have already drained whatever savings Syrian refugees once had.

by Dana Halawi

BEIRUT, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) — A cramped room without a bed, its walls streaked with mold and the ceiling leaking in slow, relentless drips. This is where Ramadan Abdallah al Ahmad and his four children call home.

I stepped gingerly, tiptoeing around the puddles left by the leaking roof and the thin mattress spread across the floor where Ahmad and his children usually sleep, before settling onto a chair in the corner.

Ahmad leaned against the doorframe, his graying hair damp in the dim light, his face a map of lines etched deep by 11 years of displacement.

“This is the second time I’ve felt the world abandoning me,” he murmured, with his eyes fixed on the family’s only electric device — a small generator just outside the door, sputtering and hissing with a faulty current.

Eleven years ago, when Syria fell into civil war, Ahmad fled. He wandered with his family through a country torn apart before eventually reaching Lebanon, along with more than a million of his compatriots.

In this remote village, starting over in exile meant building from nothing. Still, against all odds, a fragile safety net took shape: Lebanese neighbors — grappling with their own financial crisis — found ways to offer jobs and small stipends, while international organizations like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) cobbled together healthcare for the refugees.

“Just when we thought that life was finally beginning to settle into something steady, the setback came,” Ahmad recalled, spreading his hands in resignation. “We were suddenly told that the very aid we depend on for survival is about to be cut off.”

Living in Lebanon, I understand what outside assistance means for these refugees. Most have no steady source of income. Years of displacement have already drained whatever savings they once had. Their homes are crowded quarters in city slums or makeshift tents in rural fields.

For them, the aid provided by international organizations — chief among them UNHCR — is the only guarantee of survival.

“Nine out of 10 Syrian refugees in Lebanon need humanitarian assistance to cover their basic needs,” UNHCR spokesperson Lisa Abou Khaled confirmed to me.

But since the beginning of the year, as the United States — under the banner of “making foreign aid great again” — froze large portions of its assistance programs, UNHCR’s funding has been severely cut.

By mid-2025, the agency had secured only 22 percent of its target funding for the year.

“Due to significant funding reductions, UNHCR will be forced to fully discontinue support to hospitalization costs for refugees by the end of 2025,” Khaled said. “It pains us that we have to take these difficult decisions. But in the absence of sustained adequate funding, we have no choice.”

UNHCR is far from the first international organization to feel the effects of cutbacks in foreign aid from the United States and other Western countries.

As early as 2024, the United States and its allies froze funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees.

For civilians in Gaza, now under constant Israeli bombardment, the suspension of the agency’s support meant losing the last fragile lifeline that kept their basic needs met.

Of course, no one, including Syrian refugees or Gazans, should take outside aid for granted. Yet when the world’s most powerful nation treats assistance to the region’s most vulnerable as a burden or an obstacle on its own path to “greatness,” one question looms: Has it paused to consider its own hand in fueling the current Middle East crisis, in Ahmad’s displacement, and in the countless lives across the region left without shelter or safety?

“With great power comes great responsibility.” In the Marvel movie Spider-Man, Uncle Ben says these words to Peter Parker, encouraging him to help the vulnerable — a scene that has shaped how many people around the world imagine the ideals of the United States.

Yet reality outside the movie theater tells a different story: The country many look up to seems less like Spider-Man and more like a self-interested Green Goblin.

By the time our talks ended, dusk had fallen. Ahmad walked me out of the small village. “I don’t understand why life has to be so hard,” he said. “What have we done wrong to deserve this?”■