BEIRUT, Nov 20 (UNHCR) – Syrian father Mohamad believes his life can be summarized by a worn out piece of paper. Carefully folded and tucked under a floor mattress, it details a growing list of debts.

Four years in Lebanon as a refugee have sucked his resources dry, and thrown him on the mercy of a good number of neighbours, relatives and friends.

"I wake up thinking about it. I go to bed thinking about it," the father-of-four said with his eyes fixed on the floor. "What can I say, we have lost everything, and now we are being forced to give up our dignity."

Mohamad's story is far from unique. Nearly 90 per cent of Lebanon's over one million Syrian refugees are today trapped in a vicious cycle of debt, according to the findings of a recent assessment of Syrian refugee vulnerability in the country by UNHCR, UNICEF and WFP.

Most refugees have not managed to free themselves from borrowings that started to pile up in 2014. Mohamad, who used to work as a truck driver in Syria until his home in Daraa was destroyed, is one of them.

By Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: Lebanese, for the second time, are marking their 72nd Independence Day tomorrow without a president. It seems there is little to celebrate amid the crippling political paralysis that has gripped the country for nearly a year and a half now.

Lebanon’s institutions have been deliberately frozen by merchant-politicians who pretend to lead the country.

Under the grim circumstances, all official ceremonies have been cancelled.

Perhaps the most pressing issue is a continuing garbage crisis in the country since May 17 this year where political disagreements over landfills resulted in large pile-ups of garbage throughout the country’s streets.

Agriculture Minister Akran Shehayeb recently admitted the crisis was not yet solved due to “differences over the sharing of profits” and he made the desperate suggestion to start exporting the garbage as the only way out.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon said on Friday Russia was planning to carry out a three-day naval exercise in the Mediterranean Sea and that Lebanese authorities were working on ways to avoid disruption to civilian flights taking off from Beirut.

Moscow, which is carrying out air strikes in Lebanon's neighbour Syria, sent an urgent telegram to Lebanese aviation authorities saying its manoeuvres would start at midnight (2200 GMT), the ministry of Public Works and Transport said.

The ministry had set up an emergency group "to ensure the continuity of takeoffs and landings at the airport, taking into account the maximum degree of public safety, it said.

Transport Minister Ghazi Zeaiter told Reuters earlier on Friday Lebanon had refused Moscow's request to divert civilian flights from over the area in international waters where they are planning to conduct the exercise.

Jeremy Bender

Disputes between different groups of foreign fighters could undermine ISIS, according to a defector from the group who was interviewed by The Daily Beast.

The ISIS defector, who goes by the pseudonym Abu Khaled, spoke with Michael Weiss at length in Istanbul, Turkey, about ISIS and its internal operations.

According to Abu Khaled, although ISIS relies upon foreign fighters, its leaders still fear that those militants might not be entirely loyal and are concerned that ISIS could fracture along national or ethnic lines.

Previously, Khaled told Weiss, foreign fighters would be organized into battalions based upon their origin for ease of communication and control. But this practice has been halted following the dissolution of a 750-member-strong Libyan brigade, known as al-Battar, that was deemed to be insufficiently loyal to ISIS's overall hierarchy.