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A Crisis and an Opportunity
Highlights
If there is any issue that has the potential and dynamics to change directly or indirectly the future of the world at large it is the issue of middle East refugee crisis.
If there is any issue that has the potential and dynamics to change directly or indirectly the future of the world at large it is the issue of middle East refugee crisis.
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Crisis is a condition where any event is, or is expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or whole society. By this explanation we already reached a dangerous crisis of gigantic proportions not only in Middle East but also in Europe where most of the refugees are leading to. UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres while addressing the UN security council in April this year said, "The situation in the Middle East is a cancer that risks spreading and metastasizing.
If things continue this way, we could see future developments spin out of control, independently of our will and with increasingly dangerous global consequences."
But it took more than four months after this warning from such a well placed authority for the world to notice what really happening is nothing short of a catastrophe. A catastrophe not only because of a serious security and economic risk to the neighboring countries of Syria and Iraq such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, where millions of refugees are taking shelter after escaping from the harsh conditions in their countries, but also a civilizational catastrophe as these parts of the world have long been the cradle of human civilization and progressive thinking, which are now nothing short of vast concentration camps because of the brutal killings and degrading treatment meted out to religious and ethnic minorities in the hands of government and rebel terrorist groups.
It is also a catastrophe, a catastrophe of humanity, because policy makers, public intellectuals and civil society of the western world gave scant attention to this crisis in spite of a warning alarmed from an authorised organization dealing with the issue of refugees. Only after the international media flashed the photos of an innocent toddler, Aylan Kurdi, 3 year old child of a Syrian refugee, drowned and washed to the shores of Turkey while leaving for Europe in search of a safe place to lead his life along with his family, that the conscience of the world was shaken and many countries are welcoming refugees, some open heartedly, like Germany an and Sweden and some hesitantly like Hungary, Serbia and Greece.
But what are the condition that these refugees are trying to escape, even at the risk of losing their lives by drowning in the Medittarean, while crossing in dinghies with the help of smugglers and human traffickers who takes at about $1200 - $1300 - according to reports from international media - for a person? International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that by the end of August of this year more than 2,600 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean, trying to reach Greece and Italy from where they are going to Balkan and Northern and Western Europe.
What are the conditions which made these desperate refugees cross borders of Europe on foot, trains, public transport or whatever mode available? What are these conditions that made them so strong willed even to leave their elderly parents and families in the war torn countries? If we can't understand the answer to these questions and the circumstances in which they are fleeing so desperately, without any hope of returning, we are surely going to treat them as burden on the economies of the host countries as some policy makers in Europe are thinking or as a grave security threat as some ultra conservative parties are preaching in Hungary, Serbia, Greece, Italy and UK.
The refugee stream from Syria and Iraq started as a trifle in the early 2011 after some rebel groups have taken to streets against the ruling Bashar-al Assad, whose family has been ruling Syria from over three decades, demanding democracy and political progress in the lines of Arab Spring movement. As every dictator does, Asad too tried to crush the movement with little success. After the rebels took arms against the regime Asad used the sectarian divisions in Syria to stick to the throne. Smelling an opportunity to dominate the region with the help of a friendly government in place of Russian friendly Asad, USA supplied arms to Syria and helped them in every way possible without directly involving its troops.
Quoting Hassan Hassan, a Syrian commentator at the Abu Dhabi-based English language newspaper The National, New York Times reported in July 2013, "Assad is powerful now, not as a president who controls a state but as a warlord, as someone who has more and more sophisticated weapons than the others. (But) he is not capable of winning back the country." In this struggle between a dictatorial regime which is not more than a collection of war lords and ethnically divided opposition groups on the lines of Alawite, Sunni, Kurd and ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) the people of Syria are being massacred in large scale by both sides.
Even by conservative estimates more than 3,00,000 people died in this conflict excluding deaths occurred while escaping Syria, or in refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan or in Europe. Even in early 2014 UN reported that more than 10,000 children have been killed in the Syrian civil war, the United Nations says, while many more are subjected to "unspeakable" suffering, including rape, torture and recruitment for combat. More than four million refugees are taking shelter in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt with Turkey alone giving shelter to 1.9 million refugees.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that it costs $ 1.34 trillion to attend to the basic needs of these refugees who are left with little to no resources after shifting from one place to the other in Syria and abroad in search of a safe haven. But out of this amount only $ 547 million is available through funding of various countries, with USA as the biggest donor, contributing $ 219 million for the refugee fund. But it is only 41% of the total amount required to provide basic amenities to the refugees.
In his address to the nation President Obama in support of his plan to start aerial strikes to warn Assad against using chemical weapons on his detractors, said that America cannot fight to solve some one else's civil war. Overall, the situation in the Middle East is not conducive for a liberal, secular and modern voice to be heard and least to gain ascendancy over other ideologies that were so well entrenched among the popular imaginations.
These sectarian ideologies encourage the people of that particular group to think like Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, Alawites, Yazidis, Christians and such before thinking of themselves as citizens of a nation or followers of a religion. In other words nationalism, which has so well spread in the other parts of the world during and after the second world war doesn't had too many followers in this region. That is the crux of the problem.
Although immediate relief could be and should be provided not only to the refugees but also to the stranded populations who were struck between rival factions, long term nation building based not on American style regime change and aggression but in the form of spreading of liberal ideas, secularism, progressive and modern justice system should from within these societies could only solve the problem in the long term.
This is unprecedented. Because the ideas of democracy, constitutional governance, rule of law were introduced to colonial nations through barbaric methods. But these methods will be met with equally barbaric resistance as is happening in the case of ISIS in the Middle East.
So, the need of the hour is to win the confidence of the refugee populations, majority of them are in their youths, and to introduce them to liberal ideas. When these countries are safe for these refugees to return they will be the ones to build a better, prosperous and progressive region. It should also be noted that a peaceful and prosperous Middle East is in the better interests of Europe and the world at large.
By D Sukiran
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