Ammon News - Al - Jazeera America — The cylindrical water trucks, their precious cargo sloshing inside, amble along the dusty road separating the small Jordanian village of Zaatari from the massive Syrian refugee camp that has taken its name. They do not stop at the village, which like most of this desert state is parched. Instead, they roll on to the camp, past the gray armored personnel carrier at its gate, and into the sprawling warren of caravans and tents that is now Jordan's fourth-largest city.
It is often said that there was little except scorpions and sand in this forgotten patch of Jordan before waves of refugees from across the nearby Syrian border brought the camp into being a year ago. That's not quite true. Before the Syrian Zaatari, there was the Jordanian one — and today the two coexist uneasily.
The refugee camp, the second largest in the world, houses at least 120,000 Syrians, a fraction of the almost 550,000 that have sought refuge in this country of six million since the outbreak of Syria's civil war. But not all of the refugees who've come to Zaatari want to live in the camp, with its common toilets and kitchens, disease and crowding.
As a result, the sleepy village that is home to 12,000 Jordanians has been transformed by the arrival of several thousand refugees.
Canvas tents, many bearing the blue logo of the United Nations' refugee agency, the UNHCR, are pitched in back yards, or in vacant lots between the flat-roofed single- and double-story homes, which are sun-faded into dull shades of white, pale ochre or gray. The water and electricity supply to the tent dwellers is provided by the nearby home owners, who mostly foot the bills.
There are also tents abutting the village's neat olive groves, where a fine sandy dust covers the silvery green leaves of trees surrounded by chain-link fences. Some Syrians have established businesses here, such as Homs Nights, a shawarma restaurant along the village's main road. Most, however, are destitute.
Locals say that municipal water had previously been pumped through the village twice a week, but since the influx of Syrians, it's just once a week — and they blame the Syrians for the rationing. There's not enough water as it is in this country, one of the world's driest, and now there are more people sharing what little is available.
There are other pressures, too. Many of the schools in Zaatari village and its surroundings run double shifts to accommodate the increased number of students. Local health centers have seen a 30 to 40 percent increase in their case load, according to Madallah al-Khalde, the head of Zaatari's development council who also heads the charitable Zaatari Association that has aided needy locals for almost three decades.
"This area was poor already," Khalde says, "now it's a disaster area because of the large numbers of Syrian refugees." A trim middle-aged man in a blue blazer and slacks, with a thick black mustache and neatly slicked short hair, Khalde says he has three Syrian families living on the grounds of his home.
His Zaatari Association, which relies on donations from charities inside Jordan and the Gulf, used to support some 300 Jordanian families in the area, providing regular handouts of food, clothes and money as well as offering sports training for children and health and hygiene classes. But that has all stopped. The last time his group offered aid to the village's needy Jordanians was this summer, during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, a traditional period of giving alms. "Now it's all to the Syrians. We don't distribute to the Jordanian families any more," he says. "Syrians now have priority. The donors place conditions that the help is for Syrians."
Needless to say, that hasn't exactly helped reduce social friction between the two communities in the village, especially because Syrian refugees who are registered with the UNHCR can also receive monthly cash allowances and food coupons, regardless of whether they live in the camp.
The refugees; presence has created what Khalde terms "side effects," sometimes manifested as physical fights that sometimes involve knives, but more often in the form of seething resentment loudly expressed to any and all who will listen.
His organization is trying to combat the rising hostility by hosting extended workshops with small groups of up to 30 young Syrian refugees and Jordanians in the village. "We try and tell Jordanians, 'Look, they (the Syrians) have lost their homes, their families, they've fled their country.' We are splitting the loaf of bread and sharing it with them, but it's hard, especially because the Syrian crisis looks open-ended."
Zaatari is a poor town, he repeats. "The responsibility should not be just ours, or Jordan's, but on all countries."
Jordan's burden is heavy. Each refugee costs the country 2,500 Jordanian dinars ($3,530) per year to host, authorities have said. The Interior Minister has said that the foreign assistance extended to the country so far barely covers 30 percent of the costs borne by Jordan, which exceed $830 million.
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