(This story originally appeared on 7iber in Arabic in April 2014)
By Doa Ali, Hussam Da’anah, Sara Obeidat, Mohammad Hijazi, and Sufian Ahmad
Most stories that travel the 70 Km from Mafraq to Amman arrive exaggerated or distorted. A shroud of peculiar indifference to detail around this historically marginalized and disenfranchised northern city creates the impression that it’s is further away from the capital than it really is. Mafraq today has a very different demographic and dynamic compared to three years ago, before the eruption of the Syrian crisis. The Mafraq governorate forms the longest part of the Jordanian-Syrian border. As a result, its main city comprises a unique mix of Jordanians and Syrians who have left their tents in the adjacent Zaatari camp to rebuilt their lives in this host city or who arrived to it before the creation of the camp.
Last year, Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Nsour said that there is “an inclination to announce the Northern governorate a disaster area” as a result of the “great pressure” caused by the large number of Syrian refugees. This governmental “inclination” ended up in the press clippings archives, while the problems that caused Nsour to make the announcement continue to worsen.
Lack of services, unemployment, and the rising cost of living have all been sources of complaints by Mafraq residents long before the arrival of Syrian refugees. But these residents’ complaints turned into serious discontent and even a sense of threat: feelings that were directed, at times, toward the Jordanian government, in the form of protests and demands,and at other times toward their new Syrian neighbors, in the form of resentment and blame.
Zaatari, which appears from the city as a white line in the horizon, currently hosts 110,000 Syrian refugees. But it has also served as a passing point to another 45,000 refugees, according to media sources, who were “bailed out” of the camp, in addition to tens of thousands who were smuggled out of it. Those refugees who managed to get out of the camp, in addition to some others who fled to Jordan in the early days of the crisis, chose the close city of Mafraq as their new hometown, increasing the number of its residents from 80,000 in 2010 to 157,000 by end of 2013, according to the Mafraq Municipality.
Khaled Musaitef is one of those refugees. “We left everything and fled with only the clothes on our backs,” said the old man who ran away with his family from Deir Baalba in Homs eight months ago, crossed the border to Jordan, and stayed in Zaatari camp for one day before he was smuggled out of it along with his family to Mafraq. In Mafraq, he managed to get a UNHCR refugee card that has provided his family with food stamps and a portion of the medications he needs for his high blood pressure and diabetes, but also left him “in bed all day, with no job, and nothing to do”.
The video below follows Ahmad Bahaeddin, a Syrian, and two Jordanians, Ahmad Khateeb and Sameer Kassab during their daily activities, all of which were affected by the increasing pressure on the city’s already-deteriorating infrastructure.