Syrian refugees: The Oregonian sends journalists to Jordan, Lebanon

The chemical weapons deal and potential U.S. attack on Syria grab most of the headlines. But lesser known is a refugee crisis that could become one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our time.
Two million Syrians have fled their war-torn country and 5 million more are displaced inside Syria. One refugee camp in Jordan contains about 130,000 people -- more than the population of Gresham squashed into an area 1/8th the size in harsh desert conditions.

In one of its biggest operations ever, Portland-based Mercy Corps reaches more than 1.5 million Syrians delivering clean water, improving shelters and providing families with clothes, mattresses and other essentials. Medical Teams International, of Tigard, dispatches volunteer teams of doctors and nurses to treat Syrian refugees in Lebanon. On Friday, The Oregonian will send photographer Jamie Francis and me to the region for two weeks of reporting on the refugees, aid workers and issues behind the crisis. We'll visit the giant Zaatari camp, see another camp under construction and travel to border areas in both Lebanon and Jordan. We'll tell stories of people caught in the worsening crisis.
Both of us have reported on wars and refugees, Jamie in the Middle East and me in Afghanistan and Cambodia. But the extent of the outflow, which the United Nations predicts will reach 3.5 million by year's end, dwarfs anything either of us has seen.
Neal Keny-Guyer, Mercy Corps chief executive, says that for many of us, the Syrian crisis involves difficult to understand politics, regional rivalries and global tensions. "But it's important to realize that underneath all that there are real people, real mothers, real fathers, real kids that are caught up in the suffering."
"And as someone who's responded to crises for the last 30 years, this is maybe the most complex crisis that I've certainly been involved with."
An average of 6,000 Syrians flee their country every day, and the exodus is expected to increase as fighting intensifies. Many of them have lost family members and seen their neighborhoods bombed. The three-year war has killed 100,000.
Most of the refugees live in Jordan and Lebanon, straining resources. Some make tents from grain sacks or rent space in garages, struggling to find odd jobs at meager pay.
More than half of the refugees are under 18. Most children have been out of school for months or years.
Sharon Tissell, a Portland nurse who volunteered in Lebanon for Medical Teams International, saw families crammed into tents in rented corners of farmers' fields. She treated refugees with war injuries, skin diseases and respiratory illnesses. She struggled to find a fridge to hold insulin for diabetic children.
 "I would ask, 'What was your life like before this?'" said Tissell, who works in Oregon Health & Science University's trauma intensive care unit. "They would say, 'We had a wonderful three-bedroom house and we had a garden and we had all this, and now here we are living in a tent with a dirt floor and no privacy and no school for our children and no idea of our future.'"

That kind of extreme shift in standards of living makes the Syrian crisis unique, said Joe DiCarlo, Medical Teams International regional operations director. DiCarlo traveled to Lebanon in March to prepare for the first time that the organization would send teams to that country.
DiCarlo vividly recalls visiting a refugee family in a makeshift two-room tent. "It's one thing to hear the numbers, but another to be sitting inside this guy's tent and look at his children and realize that tomorrow there's another family going to be moving in with them. You could see the fear in the father's eyes."
Medical Teams has sent four teams so far, and plans another three or four teams this year. Jeff Pinneo, the organization's chief executive officer, said donors grew more attentive to Syria when the threat of a military strike began dominating the news.
"We anticipate this being a long-term problem," Pinneo said. "Even if the chemical-weapons issues are settled, there are going to be displaced people needing care for quite some time."
-- Richard Read