Four years and no longer counting

It is another anniversary. Four years ago this month the Syrian uprising of 2011 escalated into the civil war phase, with internal conflict officially declared in July 2012 by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Around this time, the outflow of refugees swelled to unprecedented numbers: from thousands and tens of thousands in mid-2012 the human stream of misery has grown to 4.8 million people who are currently registered as refugees outside of Syria, according to UNHCR figures. Among them are half a million people residing in camps. In Lebanon today the Syrian refugee crisis affects, by UN reckoning, an estimated 3 million people: half of them Syrian and half of them Lebanese.  For some time going on a year now, however, the inflow of refugees into main recipient countries around Syria has moderated. Probably it has not abated as greatly as data suggest in Lebanon simply because the