There’s a report out about the situation of Syrian students in Lebanon, authored by a specialist team of researchers affiliated with the University of California at Davis, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Institute of International Education. I know a couple of the authors very well and vouch strongly for their knowledge of the region’s politics, societies, and languages. This is a terribly sad situation, and one worries about the long-term consequences of having such a large and under-served refugee population in a country as small and overburdened (infrastructurally, economically, psychically) as Lebanon.
Among the key findings worth noting are the following points:
- The overwhelming majority of displaced Syrian university students in Lebanon are not continuing any form of higher education or advanced training.
- The crisis of a “lost generation” will grow worse as Syrian students in Lebanon will be unable to complete high school.
- There is an opportunity here for private education providers in Lebanon to open up their enrollments to Syrian students but there is some reluctance to do so on the part of higher education institutions.
- Syrian faculty face very high barriers to entry at Lebanese academic institutions.
Read the full report here.
Qifa Nabki 
While it is understandable that women, the eledrly and the children may be forced to become refugees in other countries, it is incomprehensible that men iof fighting age should become so and squat in refugee camps.
Young Syrians must go and fight for their homes and country. Several years of squating will simply come back and haunt them and, will only earn them the stigma of having abandoned their homeland joining the millions of Palestinians before them.
Fighting for their homes and country is the only opening available for these young men. Indulging in dreams of higher education at a time like this is nothing less than extravagant insolence.
Carry a gun young man and do something good for your country with your youth.
Posted by Mustap | June 21, 2014, 12:45 pmDuring the Argentine-Iranian football game, HA declared that the Iranian strategy in this tournament proved witout any doubt that resistance is the panacea for everythingand all ills including playing football. This is because the Iranian team adopted a purely defensive (which translates to resistance in HA parlance) strategy which seemed to have worked at first. HA further claimed that because of such strategy, ‘angels’ were spotted around the Iranian net that many believed were tasked in preventing the Argentines of scoring no matter how hard they tried.
The Nusra, however, would not take such claims at face value. They dispatched their own special agents to discourse with the ‘angels’ and show them with proofs and evidence that they are siding with ‘heretics’. After intense deliberations, some ‘angels’ were convinced that they may have been misled, repented and lifted their protection of the Iranian net. At this very moment, according to Nustra, Lionel Messi was able to score his goal.
HA, as a result, had no option but to place Messi in the cross hair of the ‘heroes of resistance’. Messi now went into hiding for fear of getting assassinated. HA also promised to take revenge from the Nusra agents who are behind such breach of ‘divine magnitude’, causing such a scandal and creating a dent in the ranks of ‘resistance’.
Posted by Mustap | June 22, 2014, 8:14 pm