Middle East Situation Update #4

When PRISM's third situation update closed in April, the war was 6 weeks old and still widening: 4.25 million people were displaced across Iran and Lebanon, 8 border crossings were sealed, and the first ceasefire had held for less than a day. The 4 months since have reversed the direction of movement. Lebanon's displaced population fell from 1,202,449 on 13 April to 352,793 on 6 August, and 834,651 people have returned to their areas of origin. Nearly 1.1 million people crossed from Lebanon into Syria, and 2026 returns to Afghanistan passed 1.08 million.

The movement home is running ahead of the conditions that would let it hold. In Syria, 54% of returnee households cannot cover essential expenditures from available income, and just 1% can cover them in full. Of returns from Iran to Afghanistan, 80% were deportations. Psychological distress is reported at 67% of Syrian arrival locations, and missing legal documentation at 43%. UNHCR's operational needs are shifting from border crossings to communities of return, where demand is growing faster than resources.

The war's economic shock now reaches far beyond the region. ACAPS ranks Syria 1st and Lebanon 5th of 62 countries for humanitarian risk from the conflict. Iran's near-continuous closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut 90% of Gulf shipments, lifted global energy prices 24% and exposed more than 60 fuel- and cereal-importing economies, while an El Niño declared in June compounds the pressure into 2027. Funding is moving the other way: UNHCR's Lebanon operation stands at 21% of requirements and Iran at 17%.

6 months of war, in the events that moved people

The band below runs the war's 6 months on one line: the three phases are coloured, Lebanon's displaced curve is ghosted behind, and each dot is an event that bent it. Click a dot, or step through with the arrows. The full event-by-event chronology, with sources, is in the accompanying dataset; the February-to-April entries are verified in update #2 and update #3.

Lebanon's displacement curve turned twice before it fell

IOM DTM's mobility series tracks displaced people and returnees in Lebanon on one timeline, and it shows a movement that reversed twice. Displacement climbed from 183,004 on 3 March to 1,202,449 on 13 April. The 17 April ceasefire cut it by a third within 5 days. Through May and early June the count climbed again to 961,841, as families who had gone home were displaced a second time by continued Israeli strikes. Only after the 17 June memorandum did the curve fall consistently, reaching 352,793 on 6 August across 668 cadastres.

Return concentrates where the war concentrated. Beirut alone accounts for 440,665 returnees, 53% of the total, and 88% of returnees arrived in 5 districts: Sour, El Nabatieh, Baabda, Saida and Baalbek. Among the 352,793 still displaced, 53% are women and girls, and 78% remain in 5 districts. In areas of return, DTM reports unexploded ordnance, damaged housing, disrupted livelihoods and unresolved housing, land and property issues holding families back from a durable return.

The collective-shelter story traces the same arc. WHO counted 127,714 people across 631 sites on 21 May, at the height of re-displacement; by 6 August the count was down to 26,192 across 244 sites, and UNHCR and partners had completed repairs at 447 shelter sites. Crossing figures are gross: the recorded counter-flow into Lebanon, 326,992 people between 2 March and 20 April, means net relocation is lower than the headline totals.

Where 2 million people moved

Across the region's land borders, the recorded movement since 28 February now exceeds 2 million people in the returns corridors alone, with far larger circular flows around them. The character of each corridor differs sharply, and reading them together is what separates displacement from ordinary movement: the Lebanon–Syria and Iran/Pakistan–Afghanistan corridors carry returns, much of it under coercion, while Iran's exchanges with Iraq, Türkiye and Armenia are dominated by trade, pilgrimage and near-balanced two-way traffic.

Syria receives returnees faster than it can hold them

DTM Syria recorded 123,620 arrivals across 1,163 locations in all 14 governorates between 2 March and 10 August. Arrival itself is going smoothly at most locations. What follows arrival is the problem: only 1% of key informants considered returnee household income sufficient to cover essential expenses in full, 45% said earnings met part of basic needs, and 54% said households could not cover essential expenditures at all. Livelihood opportunities exist in 60% of assessed locations and are generally described as insufficient for a reliable income.

Conditions vary sharply by governorate: arrival locations reporting difficulties for returnees run at 100% in Al-Hasakeh, 88% in As-Sweida and 63% in Rural Damascus against a 37% national average. UNHCR's border monitoring finds documentation, including civil registration and family papers, the most frequently reported protection concern, and records 168,414 Syrians stating an intention to remain permanently, with many more waiting on conditions before deciding. Returnees asked directly rank housing (83%), food (78%) and healthcare (48%) as their top needs.

Afghanistan absorbs a return wave built on deportation

Returns to Afghanistan in 2026 passed 1.08 million by 31 July, with returns from Iran and Pakistan since the war began reaching 848,500 by 15 August, and the coercion in that movement is explicit in the record: deportations account for 80% of all returns from Iran since 28 February, and 8% of July's arrivals from Pakistan. After Pakistan's 10 July deadline for undocumented Afghans, returns through its crossings rose 13% month on month, with returnees reporting harassment, arrests, detention, extortion, forced evictions and police raids regardless of legal status.

The households arriving carry the least capacity to restart. Among returnees UNHCR assisted in July, 41% of households were headed by women, 30% included a person with a disability and 4% were headed by children; border monitoring describes families arriving abruptly, without savings, assets or support networks. Their leading needs are financial support (83%), housing (60%) and food (50%). Flash floods in Nuristan and eastern Afghanistan in July damaged homes, water systems, roads and border facilities, including Torkham itself, straining reception at exactly the crossing that carries most arrivals. UNHCR maintains that many Afghans, particularly women and girls, face serious protection risks if returned, whatever their documentation status.

Hospitals, schools and food systems were hit, and the record names who hit them

PRISM aggregated Insecurity Insight's verified incident records for the crisis: 559 incidents affecting health, education, food, water and protection services between 28 February and 23 July, across 12 countries. The record names the Israeli military in 469 of the 559 incidents, 361 of them alone and 96 jointly with US forces; US forces appear in 123, Iranian forces in 51 and Hezbollah in 15. Attacks on hospitals, ambulances, schools and water systems are prohibited under international humanitarian law.

The weapon profile matches an air war against fixed civilian infrastructure: aerial bombs dropped from planes account for 356 of 559 incidents, drones for a further 72. In total, 75 hospitals, 62 health centres and 58 ambulances were damaged or destroyed, alongside 41 universities and 37 schools. Incidents fell 96% from the March peak of 301 to 12 in July, and the fall is uneven in a way that matters: education and protection incidents ended in April, food-system incidents all but ended (1 recorded in June), while attacks affecting health care continued in Lebanon every month through 23 July, 3 months into the ceasefire.

Attacks on civilians lead the protection record in 4 of 6 countries

PRISM's protection risk monitor, built on ACAPS's documented risk events and the Global Protection Cluster taxonomy, holds 923 documented events across the 6 most affected countries over its rolling 24-month window. Attacks on civilians and civilian objects (R02) are the leading risk in Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan and Iran, and the second in Afghanistan. In Lebanon, R02 alone is 135 of 273 documented events, 49% of the country's record.

The rest of each country's profile tracks its position in the war. Lebanon's record is completed by restrictions on freedom of movement and forced displacement (42 events) and by theft, extortion, forced eviction and destruction of property (32). Syria pairs attacks on civilians (61) with discrimination and denial of services (50) in areas of return. Afghanistan's leading risk is discrimination and denial of access (57), the signature of return into Taliban-governed exclusion, followed by attacks on civilians (44) and gender-based violence (20). Iran's profile is attacks on civilians (28) and arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance (20). The full profiles are on PRISM's protection dashboard.

The ceasefire did not reach the health system

WHO's regional situation report draws the health toll of the war's first 3 months. In Lebanon: 3,468 people killed and 10,577 injured between 2 March and 2 June, of whom 965 were killed after the 17 April ceasefire; 191 attacks on health care killing 128 health workers and injuring 357; 42 primary health centres and 3 hospitals closed, 17 hospitals damaged, 118 pharmacies and warehouses affected. In Iran: 3,375 civilians killed, including 496 women, and 33,806 injured between 28 February and 6 April, with 26 attacks on health care killing 11 health workers.

Disease follows the destruction. Acute watery diarrhoea in Lebanon rose from 504 to 803 weekly cases between epidemiological weeks 17 and 20, reaching 2,777 cumulative cases among displaced communities in crowded shelters. Syria recorded 545 measles cases by early June and more than 5,800 cutaneous leishmaniasis cases in the first quarter; Iraq confirmed 88 Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever cases with 8 deaths. WHO's regional flash appeal of $30.3M stood 12% funded, while its Dubai logistics hub kept delivering, $4.57M in medical countermeasures to 24 countries, through higher costs and disrupted supply lines.

In Gaza, 94% of residents need shelter

Gaza's catastrophe predates this war and runs on its own clock, and the August reporting is stark. UN agencies reported on 20 August that 94% of Gaza's 2.1 million residents need shelter: more than 4 in 5 families live in critical or catastrophic conditions, nearly 2 in 3 are in tents or makeshift structures built for short-term use, and over 70% of families were flooded last winter. Israel's restrictions on the entry of shelter materials, heavy machinery and supplies stand between this population and the coming winter, alongside a $562M requirement to improve living conditions. Only 3% of Gaza's cropland remains available to grow food, and on 20 August the bodies of 50 people killed more than 2 years ago, including 19 children, recovered from the rubble over the preceding days, were buried.

UNICEF's nutrition survey, collected between 31 May and 15 June and released on 24 August, measures both what aid achieved and what the war has already taken. Acute malnutrition among children has fallen to about 1%, from the famine confirmed in August 2025, when 17,000 children were admitted for treatment in a single month. Stunting tells the longer story: 12.2% of children, 1 in 8, are chronically malnourished, nearly 1 in 10 women of reproductive age are malnourished themselves, and only 20–30% of toddlers eat a sufficiently diverse diet. In Lebanon's south, meanwhile, Israel is expanding demolitions of homes and infrastructure under the ceasefire.

The shock reaches more than 60 importing economies

ACAPS's global risk matrix scores 62 countries by combining humanitarian vulnerability (weighted 55%) with each country's strongest exposure to the war's economic transmission (45%). Syria ranks 1st with the maximum score of 5.00: over 40% of its public bank branches are out of operation, 90% of its people live below the poverty line, and nearly 850,000 returnees from Lebanon are arriving into that economy. Lebanon ranks 5th, where fuel prices rose 84% between February and May, bread 10–20%, and 21% of the population already faces acute food insecurity.

The mechanics run through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has kept closed near-continuously since February by attacking and threatening shipping, cutting 90% of Gulf shipments with no rerouting equivalent: global energy prices rose 24%, fertiliser was projected up more than 30% for 2026, and the closure landed exactly on planting season in Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan. Remittances carry the shock into households: Gulf GDP is contracting about 2.4%, with working-hour losses equal to 14M full-time jobs in 2026 and 38M in 2027. Nigeria's diesel is up 86%; Somalia's water trucking up 40%; Yemen, importing over 90% of its food, faces 53% of its population food-insecure by year-end; and an El Niño declared in June gives Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan a compounding second shock into 2027.

The biggest operations run on the thinnest funding

UNHCR's funding table for the region shows coverage collapsing exactly where requirements are largest: Lebanon, the biggest operation at $472M, stands at 21%, and Iran at 17%, against 68% for Armenia, the smallest. UNHCR calls the shortfall a risk of a crisis within a crisis; in July, the first month after a 4-month suspension, it interviewed more than 5,900 people for voluntary repatriation.

The inter-agency picture on PRISM's live tracker, drawing OCHA FTS, adds the contrast: Lebanon's 2026 response plan is 98.7% funded ($631M of $640M) while Syria's $2.92B plan stands at 33.8% and Afghanistan's $1.71B at 41.1%. A plan and an agency requirement are different instruments, and the gap between Lebanon's two numbers is itself the finding: the emergency plan is covered while the refugee agency carrying returns and protection is running at a fifth of its requirement. WHO's $30.3M flash appeal (12%) and Gaza's $562M living-conditions requirement complete the picture.

Border access has widened since April: 28 of 44 official crossings are fully open against 26 in Update #3, with 8 still closed. On the ground that opening cuts both ways, easing family movement and trade while giving deportation corridors more throughput.

A long war economy is taking shape

ACAPS now treats the post-memorandum ‘tactical deal’ as the baseline: 6 more months of instability, with a significant likelihood of re-escalation because none of the war's drivers is resolved. Its core judgement is that prolonged uncertainty, elevated costs and exhausted coping capacity will drive the humanitarian damage, and that prices can stay high for years after the shipping lanes reopen, as they did after the 2022 Black Sea disruption.

Writing in Foreign Affairs on 27 August, Dina Esfandiary, Becca Wasser and Ziad Daoud reach the same horizon from the strategic side: Washington and Tehran appear poised to keep fighting on and off to wear down the other's materiel and willpower, the Houthis and Iranian-aligned Iraqi militias have joined, and a port in Egypt has been struck by drones, an attack no party has claimed and Washington blames on Iran. Iran can shut the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely merely by threatening ships in it, and no air-defence system covering millions of square miles will stop every strike. Gulf states are already building the infrastructure of a long war: overseas oil storage in South Korea, Japan and India, new defence pacts, arms purchases from Europe, South Korea, Türkiye and Ukraine.

For the humanitarian system the operational conclusion is UNHCR's: the emergency is moving from borders into communities of return, where reintegration, documentation, livelihoods and services will decide whether 2 million returns hold, and where funding is thinnest.

Where attention should go next