Samantha Cameron's tears for the innocents: The real story of visit to Syrian camp by PM's wife which stirred him to action
- Samantha Cameron visited a camp close to Syrian border
- PM's wife is an ambassador for Save The Children
- She met families displaced by the violence sweeping the nation
By IAN GALLAGHER PUBLISHED: 21:05 GMT, 7 September 2013 | UPDATED: 14:32 GMT, 8 September 2013
Samantha Cameron talks to Rana, 13, who saw her uncle being killed in the street in Syria. The PM's wife visited Lebabon in her role as Save The Children ambassador
In a cramped tent in a refugee settlement close to the Syrian border, two women cling to each other, both weeping openly.One is Um Nabil, 35, who has fled the fighting in her homeland. The other is Samantha Cameron.She is on her first solo foreign trip as a Save The Children ambassador and has been listening, shaking her head in disbelief, to a pitiful tale.
‘I am with you. I will do all I can to help you,’ Mrs Cameron says.
This encounter, in March, is one that neither woman is likely to forget. For Um Nabil and her family it offered real hope that their lives would improve.And for the Prime Minister’s wife, it prompted her to press her husband to do more to help ease the humanitarian disaster.
One Cabinet Minister claimed Mrs Cameron is the ‘biggest explanation’ for the PM’s hawkish approach to the conflict, which has already cost more than 100,000 lives.
Yet in a terrible indignity that is certain to cause Mrs Cameron dismay, The Mail on Sunday has learned that not only have Um Nabil’s circumstances failed to improve, they are about to get significantly worse.
Along with most of the other 150 refugees who inhabit their small tented encampment, Um Nabil and her family have been told that unless they leave by 11am today, they will be physically evicted. ‘We cannot even take the tents with us,’ she says. ‘We have been told they must remain for other refugees, whose need is apparently greater than our own.
‘We have no idea what we will do, where we will go. We will have to sleep in the fields with no shelter.
'What kind of life is that? It is a tragedy.’
When Mrs Cameron visited Lebanon on a low-profile trip without media accompaniment, Save The Children disclosed only that she met families near the Syrian border.
The Majdla Anjar camp, close to the Syrian border
At the time, the charity issued a press release quoting Mrs Cameron saying: ‘As a mother, it is horrifying to hear the harrowing stories from the children I met today. No child should ever experience what they have.'With every day that passes, more children and parents are being killed, more innocent childhoods are being smashed to pieces.’ But until now the truth about the people she visited has never been revealed. While all speak highly of Mrs Cameron, praising her sensitivity, some express disappointment with Save The Children and other humanitarian agencies who, they say, should be doing more to help.
Abd Razzak Khalil and his son Hadi, two, who met Mrs Cameron
We found some of the people Mrs Cameron met living on the edge of the small town of Majdal Anjar, surrounded by barren mountains, in the eastern Bekaa Valley. Made up of 25 families, living in 21 tents, their camp has only two toilets and no washing facilities.Everyone receives £17 a month from the UN refugee agency UNHCR, and a few families most in need are given food vouchers from Save The Children.
All insist that this is not nearly enough. Because there are no cooking facilities, they eat only cold food, mostly beans and cheese flavoured with herbs and oil.To supplement the handouts, the men seek farm work, but speak of being ‘treated like slaves’ and paid only half of what they had been promised. Sometimes they receive nothing at all.
But worst of all, says one man, banging his fist in anger on the floor: ‘When evicted we won’t be able to give our children shelter, never mind enough food.’
Aid agencies find the decision to evict illogical, if not downright cruel. It was taken by officials from the local municipality which, like others in the Bekaa Valley, is unsympathetic to the refugees’ plight. ‘The camp was only meant to be temporary, and now we have more emergency cases so the people there now, some have been there for six months, must move on,’ said a spokesman for the town’s mayor.
When Um Nabil, her husband and their three children – daughters Hiba, 11, Baraa, nine, and six-year-old son Nabil – met Mrs Cameron, they were new arrivals from the Syrian city of Homs, scene of some of the most appalling violence.
‘Mrs Cameron asked us about our situation and we told her about what had happened in Homs, the constant shelling, the killing, the rape,’ says Um Nabil.‘Like me she has three children, she understands. I spoke of the boy, how frightened he still is, the bedwetting and nightmares, and the terrible things the girls saw. Her eyes were wet with tears all the time I was talking, but then she started to weep. That’s when she hugged me, and I started crying too.
An estimated two million people have been displaced by the civil war in Syria
‘Of all the people who have visited us in the past six months, she was the most compassionate and humanitarian. But we didn’t tell her everything. At the time it was too painful. ‘There was the time, for instance, when my husband’s sister was thrown from her fourth-floor balcony by Assad’s militia who went to her apartment and tried to rape her.'She survived but is crippled. And my daughter watched her uncle get cut down in the street by a sniper. A tank then fired on him and his intestines appeared to explode.
‘But we told Mrs Cameron of our escape, when our car came under fire from snipers near a checkpoint one night. We crawled out of the car but the searchlight wasn’t working so we were able to hide in tall grass.'Mrs Cameron asked us about life in the camp and became very upset. She is a sensitive lady and I could see the love and pain in her eyes.’
As Um Nabil speaks, her son plays nearby. ‘He is still traumatised and has nightmares. See how quiet and afraid he is. There are about 100 children in this camp but they play so quietly; that is not normal.’ Her son enters her tent and flinches at the sound of an explosion over the border.
‘We must get away from here,’ says his mother. ‘I know Mrs Cameron is trying to help us. I am convinced of that.’
A Free Syrian Army fighter carries the body of a fellow fighter during clashes in Aleppo last month
Many of the camp’s refugees enjoyed comfortable lives before the war. Amar Abou Mohamed, a 32-year-old shoe designer from Damascus, employed ten people in three shops. ‘Life was good,’ he says.
Next to him sits Abd Razzak Khalil, 37, once a prosperous estate agent with a spacious apartment.
‘Those days are a world away,’ he says.‘Yesterday I kissed my two-and-a-half-year-old son Hadi on the forehead and as I did so I said to myself silently, “I cannot give you enough to eat, my boy, and now I cannot give you shelter.” ’‘We met Mrs Cameron, she brought sweets for the children. She was very kind and responded with great sadness to our stories.
‘I spoke of seeing three friends lined up against a wall by the Shabiha [the feared, armed regime supporters]. They took machetes to the men’s heads, cutting them open like watermelons. There was great honesty in Mrs Cameron’s eyes.'She was affected deeply by our suffering. But now, we are being evicted. It is truly terrible. We have no idea what will happen.’
Abd holds his thumbs and forefinger together, leaving only an inch between them, saying: ‘But I still have this much dignity left so when them municipality police come, I will not resist. We will leave quietly.’
A Syrian army soldier walks on a street in the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus, Syria
His friends nod in agreement as he talks of how Save The Children and other charities ‘have let us down’. ‘I can’t remember the last time they were here. They were happy to use us when Mrs Cameron visited. Shouldn’t they have stuck by us?’
When we explain that we requested Save The Children accompany us on our visit but the charity declined saying the ‘security situation in the region had deteriorated’, Abd and his friends snort with derision. ‘I can’t agree,’ said Amar. ‘Nothing happens here.’
Much of the refugees’ criticism – but not all – stems from frustration and is not wholly justifiable. Their camp was not set up by Save The Children, but a Kuwaiti charity.
What’s more the humanitarian crisis is simply overwhelming. Lebanon hosts more Syrian refugees than anywhere else, 730,000 registered arrivals and possibly 300,000 more without documents – a lot for a country of four million.
People inspect the damage at a site hit by what activists say was a car bomb in Raqqa province, eastern Syria last week
Yesterday International Development Secretary Justine Greening urged countries opposed to military action in Syria to ‘step up’ their contributions to aiding the refugees. At the G20 summit Mr Cameron announced an additional £52 million in British aid, bringing the commitment to £400 million.
Few charities are as active as Save The Children in the area. It has provided healthcare for more than 10,000 mothers and children; helped educate 12,000 children and aided thousands of refugees with work. Save The Children yesterday admitted that the refugees have a ‘right to be angry’.
The charity’s director in Lebanon, Sonia Zambakides, said: ‘Unfortunately, the threat of eviction is something refugees are all too familiar with. The land they settle on is generally privately owned or owned by the local municipality.
‘We will provide vulnerable families who have been evicted with the basic materials to build a new temporary shelter as well as household items and cash or vouchers to help them buy food and other essentials.
‘We also provide health, child protection and education services.
‘We have helped tens of thousands of vulnerable children and their families in Lebanon but much more needs to be done.
‘The needs are overwhelming. But the world is still not listening; the UN appeal to help these people is less than 40 per cent funded, as is Save The Children’s appeal. We urgently need more funding.
‘Because of our limited funds, we have to concentrate on helping the most vulnerable families with he most acute needs.
‘But much as we would like to, we cannot reach everyone.’
Samantha Cameron talks to Rana, 13, who saw her uncle being killed in the street in Syria. The PM's wife visited Lebabon in her role as Save The Children ambassador
In a cramped tent in a refugee settlement close to the Syrian border, two women cling to each other, both weeping openly.One is Um Nabil, 35, who has fled the fighting in her homeland. The other is Samantha Cameron.She is on her first solo foreign trip as a Save The Children ambassador and has been listening, shaking her head in disbelief, to a pitiful tale.
‘I am with you. I will do all I can to help you,’ Mrs Cameron says.
This encounter, in March, is one that neither woman is likely to forget. For Um Nabil and her family it offered real hope that their lives would improve.And for the Prime Minister’s wife, it prompted her to press her husband to do more to help ease the humanitarian disaster.
One Cabinet Minister claimed Mrs Cameron is the ‘biggest explanation’ for the PM’s hawkish approach to the conflict, which has already cost more than 100,000 lives.
Yet in a terrible indignity that is certain to cause Mrs Cameron dismay, The Mail on Sunday has learned that not only have Um Nabil’s circumstances failed to improve, they are about to get significantly worse.
Along with most of the other 150 refugees who inhabit their small tented encampment, Um Nabil and her family have been told that unless they leave by 11am today, they will be physically evicted. ‘We cannot even take the tents with us,’ she says. ‘We have been told they must remain for other refugees, whose need is apparently greater than our own.
‘We have no idea what we will do, where we will go. We will have to sleep in the fields with no shelter.
'What kind of life is that? It is a tragedy.’
When Mrs Cameron visited Lebanon on a low-profile trip without media accompaniment, Save The Children disclosed only that she met families near the Syrian border.
The Majdla Anjar camp, close to the Syrian border
At the time, the charity issued a press release quoting Mrs Cameron saying: ‘As a mother, it is horrifying to hear the harrowing stories from the children I met today. No child should ever experience what they have.'With every day that passes, more children and parents are being killed, more innocent childhoods are being smashed to pieces.’ But until now the truth about the people she visited has never been revealed. While all speak highly of Mrs Cameron, praising her sensitivity, some express disappointment with Save The Children and other humanitarian agencies who, they say, should be doing more to help.
Abd Razzak Khalil and his son Hadi, two, who met Mrs Cameron
We found some of the people Mrs Cameron met living on the edge of the small town of Majdal Anjar, surrounded by barren mountains, in the eastern Bekaa Valley. Made up of 25 families, living in 21 tents, their camp has only two toilets and no washing facilities.Everyone receives £17 a month from the UN refugee agency UNHCR, and a few families most in need are given food vouchers from Save The Children.
All insist that this is not nearly enough. Because there are no cooking facilities, they eat only cold food, mostly beans and cheese flavoured with herbs and oil.To supplement the handouts, the men seek farm work, but speak of being ‘treated like slaves’ and paid only half of what they had been promised. Sometimes they receive nothing at all.
But worst of all, says one man, banging his fist in anger on the floor: ‘When evicted we won’t be able to give our children shelter, never mind enough food.’
Aid agencies find the decision to evict illogical, if not downright cruel. It was taken by officials from the local municipality which, like others in the Bekaa Valley, is unsympathetic to the refugees’ plight. ‘The camp was only meant to be temporary, and now we have more emergency cases so the people there now, some have been there for six months, must move on,’ said a spokesman for the town’s mayor.
When Um Nabil, her husband and their three children – daughters Hiba, 11, Baraa, nine, and six-year-old son Nabil – met Mrs Cameron, they were new arrivals from the Syrian city of Homs, scene of some of the most appalling violence.
‘Mrs Cameron asked us about our situation and we told her about what had happened in Homs, the constant shelling, the killing, the rape,’ says Um Nabil.‘Like me she has three children, she understands. I spoke of the boy, how frightened he still is, the bedwetting and nightmares, and the terrible things the girls saw. Her eyes were wet with tears all the time I was talking, but then she started to weep. That’s when she hugged me, and I started crying too.
An estimated two million people have been displaced by the civil war in Syria
‘Of all the people who have visited us in the past six months, she was the most compassionate and humanitarian. But we didn’t tell her everything. At the time it was too painful. ‘There was the time, for instance, when my husband’s sister was thrown from her fourth-floor balcony by Assad’s militia who went to her apartment and tried to rape her.'She survived but is crippled. And my daughter watched her uncle get cut down in the street by a sniper. A tank then fired on him and his intestines appeared to explode.
‘But we told Mrs Cameron of our escape, when our car came under fire from snipers near a checkpoint one night. We crawled out of the car but the searchlight wasn’t working so we were able to hide in tall grass.'Mrs Cameron asked us about life in the camp and became very upset. She is a sensitive lady and I could see the love and pain in her eyes.’
As Um Nabil speaks, her son plays nearby. ‘He is still traumatised and has nightmares. See how quiet and afraid he is. There are about 100 children in this camp but they play so quietly; that is not normal.’ Her son enters her tent and flinches at the sound of an explosion over the border.
‘We must get away from here,’ says his mother. ‘I know Mrs Cameron is trying to help us. I am convinced of that.’
A Free Syrian Army fighter carries the body of a fellow fighter during clashes in Aleppo last month
Many of the camp’s refugees enjoyed comfortable lives before the war. Amar Abou Mohamed, a 32-year-old shoe designer from Damascus, employed ten people in three shops. ‘Life was good,’ he says.
Next to him sits Abd Razzak Khalil, 37, once a prosperous estate agent with a spacious apartment.
‘Those days are a world away,’ he says.‘Yesterday I kissed my two-and-a-half-year-old son Hadi on the forehead and as I did so I said to myself silently, “I cannot give you enough to eat, my boy, and now I cannot give you shelter.” ’‘We met Mrs Cameron, she brought sweets for the children. She was very kind and responded with great sadness to our stories.
‘I spoke of seeing three friends lined up against a wall by the Shabiha [the feared, armed regime supporters]. They took machetes to the men’s heads, cutting them open like watermelons. There was great honesty in Mrs Cameron’s eyes.'She was affected deeply by our suffering. But now, we are being evicted. It is truly terrible. We have no idea what will happen.’
Abd holds his thumbs and forefinger together, leaving only an inch between them, saying: ‘But I still have this much dignity left so when them municipality police come, I will not resist. We will leave quietly.’
A Syrian army soldier walks on a street in the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus, Syria
His friends nod in agreement as he talks of how Save The Children and other charities ‘have let us down’. ‘I can’t remember the last time they were here. They were happy to use us when Mrs Cameron visited. Shouldn’t they have stuck by us?’
When we explain that we requested Save The Children accompany us on our visit but the charity declined saying the ‘security situation in the region had deteriorated’, Abd and his friends snort with derision. ‘I can’t agree,’ said Amar. ‘Nothing happens here.’
Much of the refugees’ criticism – but not all – stems from frustration and is not wholly justifiable. Their camp was not set up by Save The Children, but a Kuwaiti charity.
What’s more the humanitarian crisis is simply overwhelming. Lebanon hosts more Syrian refugees than anywhere else, 730,000 registered arrivals and possibly 300,000 more without documents – a lot for a country of four million.
People inspect the damage at a site hit by what activists say was a car bomb in Raqqa province, eastern Syria last week
Yesterday International Development Secretary Justine Greening urged countries opposed to military action in Syria to ‘step up’ their contributions to aiding the refugees. At the G20 summit Mr Cameron announced an additional £52 million in British aid, bringing the commitment to £400 million.
Few charities are as active as Save The Children in the area. It has provided healthcare for more than 10,000 mothers and children; helped educate 12,000 children and aided thousands of refugees with work. Save The Children yesterday admitted that the refugees have a ‘right to be angry’.
The charity’s director in Lebanon, Sonia Zambakides, said: ‘Unfortunately, the threat of eviction is something refugees are all too familiar with. The land they settle on is generally privately owned or owned by the local municipality.
‘We will provide vulnerable families who have been evicted with the basic materials to build a new temporary shelter as well as household items and cash or vouchers to help them buy food and other essentials.
‘We also provide health, child protection and education services.
‘We have helped tens of thousands of vulnerable children and their families in Lebanon but much more needs to be done.
‘The needs are overwhelming. But the world is still not listening; the UN appeal to help these people is less than 40 per cent funded, as is Save The Children’s appeal. We urgently need more funding.
‘Because of our limited funds, we have to concentrate on helping the most vulnerable families with he most acute needs.
‘But much as we would like to, we cannot reach everyone.’
