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Europe, the Refugee Crisis, and Conservatives
I noticed yesterday on the Member Feed that Ricochet member F-18 was wondering why we hadn’t been discussing the refugee crisis on Ricochet. In fact, we have — quite a bit — but he’s right that some of the most interesting discussions have been coming up in the comment threads, and thus aren’t so easy to find.
I’m in Europe now, and was living in Turkey as the Syrian war began and the refugees began streaming across the border. So I thought I’d open this thread to anyone who wants to ask questions about what exactly happened and what’s happening now in Europe.
Before that, though, I thought I’d put up links to some of the posts I wrote here on Ricochet as the crisis began. It would take you a few hours to read them all and watch all of the video interviews, but if you have them to spare, you might find them useful: You can see from them how absolutely clear it was, even in 2011, that a disaster of this scale was inevitable.
So when I read now that thanks to a single photo of a drowned Syrian toddler the world has realized it has a very big problem on its hands, I think you’ll understand why I feel … well, I don’t know what I feel. And I guess what I feel isn’t really the point.
July 10, 2011: Mike and Bob From Hama
… I suppose the place to start is at the end. I know the look he gave me when I left. I see it a lot: “You’re a journalist. Please, make the world understand what’s happening to us. If they understood, they wouldn’t let it happen.”
July 11, 2011: “Hama Doesn’t Forget or Forgive“
… He was groping for any kind of hope, but realistically hopeless. “The whole world wants Assad to stay. Everyone is too afraid of what will happen if he falls.” He was well aware that this fear wasn’t baseless. Overwhelmingly, he thought, the most likely outcome of this was civil war. “There is a huge hatred for the Alawites.”
He stressed that anyone who thought compromise or reform possible at this point was delusional. “They don’t understand the Syrian mentality. Hama doesn’t forget or forgive.”
Bob had joined us by this point. I asked, again, why they were talking to the media. “Governments won’t listen,” Mike said. “But the message has to get out to people. People can make their governments put pressure on Assad.”
I told him that I thought the likelihood of this was close to zero, and I explained why. Bob tried to insist I was wrong.
Mike interrupted him and said, “No, she’s right. I agree with her. She’s right.
“Rationally, there’s no hope.”
June 18, 2011: When Syria Explodes
… It’s not a secret that Syria is imploding. But the key thing to grasp is that it won’t stop there: There is a real possibility that this regime will take its neighbors down with it. I’m not sure that the West — which from what I can tell is now completely preoccupied with itself and its economic problems — is sufficiently grasping this. …
February 2, 2012: The Evil Regime: A Report From Syria
… Having been told that the videos of carnage coming out of Syria were doctored or manufactured to exaggerate the scale of the catastrophe there, he decided he had an obligation to see for himself. He disguised himself as a naive Turkish restauranteur and went to Syria undercover. He was there for two weeks before being arrested and deported. He’s in Istanbul now, and I saw him last night. Physically he’s fine, but …
February 3, 2012: What Ilhan Tanır Saw in Syria, Part I
… “Conditions are far worse than I expected. … They come house by house and they arrest every single person … it’s far worse than anything you can imagine. … the civil war has not arrived yet, but it looks like maybe a few weeks … I definitely think Assad forces must be distracted, must be distracted, they’re using all their resources on the people … but they’re doing this because there’s nothing else they worry about right now … Yes, Assad might play whatever he’s got — Kurds, PKK, it’s a risk … Everyone is waiting, Assad does what he does best … “
February 3, 2012: What Ilhan Tanır Saw in Syria, Part II
“I had no idea what they were going to do to me … they wouldn’t let me call my embassy, no way. … I thought, ‘Okay, this is not going well.’ … They took me downstairs, which is a terrible, terrible place … smells, I cannot describe how disgusting it was … people are coming in chained, like ten, five, ten people … they were really angry at me, I can see … they only hit me in the chaos, and it wasn’t too bad, compared to other people … I have no idea who did it, they did it from my back … it could have been much worse, it was chaos.” …
February 4, 2012: Let Me Save You Time on Syria
Let me put this to you simply. Assad is a monster. He is evil beyond comprehension. No one is going to stop him until he and everyone around him is dead. But you’re out of your minds if you convince yourself the FSA is comprised of potentially friendly, liberal democrats. There’s not a liberal democrat between here and the Horn of Africa, just trust me on this; they don’t even know what those words mean, they just know that you have to say them if you want to have any hope of being saved by those weird but freakishly powerful Americans for whom the words “liberal democrats” are the magic elixer. There will be no friendly, moderate, secular regime in Syria, ever, and the first thing the FSA will do if anyone helps them is slaughter Alawites and Christians. Everyone knows it, and at this point, who could possibly be surprised and who could blame them. They hate the world in this descending order, with allowances for overlap: Shia, Jews, Christians, Iran, America, Israel, Russia, Turkey. They’ll probably hate each other, too, soon enough.
The only options here are unbearably awful and unspeakably awful. There’s no happy outcome. The United States remains the only country in the world with anything like the military power to change this situation in a meaningful way, and nothing but military power will affect it, and the US isn’t going to use it. Our economy is in the tank, we’re tied down around the world, we’re hamstrung by Russia and Iran. We’re done with this region; we’re not even interested.
We will be blamed for not intervening, just as we were blamed for intervening in Iran and Iraq, and everyone will forget that both intervening and not intervening are moral choices; and the US was never presented — ever — with a choice between supporting good and supporting evil in this part of the world, just between supporting evil and supporting slightly-less-evil. In a choice between supporting evil and supporting slightly less-evil, slightly-less-evil equals good. That’s the real world.
… So, yeah, they’re Islamists, not the shy flower of the Scottish Enlightenment, but they seem to have some interest in democracy, and they talk about the Turkish model, which I’m sure they don’t understand, but which, if it means to them, “Islamic and democratic,” is probably a good thing. Maybe if you could get enough UN peacekeepers in there fast enough after Assad falls, you could prevent some of the slaughter of the minorities that would otherwise ensue. Maybe you could get a functional state up-and-running fast enough that Syria doesn’t become the Somalia of the Levant, maybe not.
The risk right now to Syria’s neighbors, if it tries to help, is extreme: Assad holds the PKK card, it has huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The regime is going bankrupt, at the very least there will be floods of refuges if this continues, Turkey certainly can’t absorb them. The Russians would be perfectly happy for every man, woman and child in Syria to be tortured and killed so long as nothing gets between it and its warm water base at Tartus. The French and the British will make very stern noises, but what are they going to do. UN? Useless. Arab League? Useless. GCC? Useless.
Meanwhile, those kids are dying. I’ve met some of them, Ilhan has met many more, and they’re kids who have been pushed into radicalism because they’re going to be killed tomorrow, so you better well hope there’s a better life on the other side. It’s that simple, really. …
And so here we are, on September 23, 2015. Please feel free to ask me any question you have about the refugee crisis — how it began, how Europe is reacting to it, what conservatives should think about it, and what might happen next.
Sadly, I know a lot about it.
And I know that for reasons I’ll never understand — as long as I’m alive — people are surprised by it.
Published in Foreign Policy, General
These politicians, led by Herr Gauck and Frau Merkel, presume that out of these migrants will immediately emerge motivated, intelligent, educated and employable skilled workers, who then will replace aging German employee. It is a laughable assumption. It stands in gross opposition to each and every experience that Germany has had in the past with migrants and guest workers.
–article just published by Vaclav Klaus, “A Multicultural Imperium Built on Childish Fantasy.”
Greece appears to be paying a heavy price in the migration drama. I’m wondering if there are German strings attached to Greece’s apparent acquiescence.
I read the other day of a German school exempting Muslim students from attending field trips to a concentration camp for fear of upsetting delicate Muslim shibboleths about denial (or is it salubriousness?) of Jew extermination.
Bottom line in all of this, I don’t think Claire really appreciates that if imams in places like Germany or Sweden somehow devised an Islam devoid of political and ethnic separatism/chauvinism — in other words, devoid of subjugations of women, of Sharia hudud punishments, of Jihad terror — then other Muslims would denounce them as heretics and apostates, and they’d live thereafter under a death fatwa.
Once Muslim in places like Germany and Sweden — far more besotted with multicultural ideology than France with her republican institutions/traditions — reach, say, 20 percent of the country’s population, the societies as a whole will probably start to behave in ways more “Islamic.”* More social dislocation and strife, poorer quality economic goods produced, etc. “Made in Germany” as an imprimatur of quality will, in a few decades, be something of the past.
* Out of 16 nations in which Muslims form between 20 and 50 percent of the population, only three rank as free: Benin, Serbia & Montenegro (as it was then), and Suriname. 2005 Freedom House study.
I think they should do a lot more, but from Al-Monitor:
Sorry for taking so long to answer this; it’s a complicated question and I didn’t want to be incomprehensible by saying, “Well, this guy is smart and I respect him and he has deep experience in the region. He suggests we do this, which is totally idiotic.”
I think maybe you meant something like, “What are the range of policy options that serious people might be considering,” right? Let me see if I can come up with a short reading list from the people who I think know the region best and post it, including those who disagree with me — I’ll let them defend their views themselves, rather than trying to explain what they’re arguing for and probably doing it poorly because I don’t agree with them. Stay tuned.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
I have followed the goings-on in Syria religiously the past year. The miracle of modern communication has even afforded me the opportunity to make some pen pals in the northern part of the country.
I asked one of them recently, an Assyrian girl in the Christian militia, if she had ever considered trying to seek asylum in the West. I was surprised by her answer, which I have paraphrased:
“No. All of us have lost loved ones and know people in ISIS captivity. If we all leave, our culture will be destroyed forever. I feel safer in Syria now than I would if I moved to Europe. The Christians there have no means to defend themselves. But here? We are all armed. And we kill any Daesh (ISIS) who threaten us.”
About Assad:
“We lived well under the regime. Christians were protected. If we didn’t rebel, we were left alone. When the revolution began though, many of us supported it and hoped for democracy. But we didn’t realize how good we had it. What has the revolution brought us? Our homes destroyed, our girls forced into slavery and marriage, and constant death. We don’t like Assad, but what other choice do we have have? The U.S. will never recognize an independent Assyria or Kurdistan here.”
And about the refugees:
“Europe is killing itself. They are letting in the same people who destroyed our country. One day, the Chrisrians there may be the ones fleeing to the Assyrian lands for protection.”
If she’d like to join Ricochet, we’d offer her a free membership. Would you invite her on our behalf?
Kudos to the government of Abu Dhabi and the rest of the Emirates as well, but the Saudis- nope.
They should be allowing every single Muslim driven out of Syria to go live in their land, and collect those generous welfare benefits the Saudi Kingdom gives to its citizens.
After all, they plainly expect the European nations to extend the same gratuities to the Christians driven out of Syria.
I kid, because I know that’s not what they really mean. They expect the Europeans to pay for the Muslims driven out of Syria, and care nothing for the Christians, if any survive.
But I’ll be charitable myself, and pretend as if they also want the Europeans to keep any Christian refugees alive.
Hence, I will suggest that my plan has some basis in reality, and suggest that the US government propose it as official policy.
Again, I kid.
Frankly they could all do better. Let’s not forget that allowing Syrians residence is not the same as giving them citizenship or a permanent right to remain and build a home. It can all be withdrawn at whim.
Wrt the Saudis – I wouldn’t hold my breath.
This is a big concern and is always a big concern with civil wars: The people who are most needed to rebuild it when it’s over leave. I’m not sure there’s an easy answer.
But I’d say the very easy calls, when it comes to charitable donations, are the refugee children, especially in Jordan. They need food, clean water, vaccination against epidemic disease (especially polio), medical care (many have been gravely injured), protection from sexual exploitation — the girls in those camps will be raped — protection from Islamist indoctrination (many will get aid from Islamist groups, so they’ll imprint on the people who feed them, as children do); and as much education as they can possibly get under the circumstances. They’ll otherwise be a completely illiterate generation, and that’s a ticking time bomb for the world, so even if one is entirely cold to their suffering, there’s a clear national security interest in helping them. Here’s a description of these camps from Senator Chris Murphy, and it tallies exactly with every other description, so I believe it. (I haven’t seen the camps in Jordan, personally, but there’s real unanimity in the way they’re described, so I’m not in much doubt that this is the situation.)
So my sense is that any charitable donation that goes toward feeding, vaccinating, educating or protecting these kids from abuse is a worthy one. Over the years, I’ve found that the most effective charities — everywhere — are small, Christian ones that have had a longstanding presence; but in this case, it may well be that only the huge bureaucracies like the World Food Programme and UNICEF have the ability to work on this scale, even if they’re notoriously imperfect and sure to waste a lot of it.
So I would donate to the groups working in Jordan. That’s where the need is greatest. (And to anyone who tells me that children facing the prospect of polio, starvation, or rape are someone else’s problem and we don’t want Muslim immigrants in America because they don’t share our Judeo-Christian values? Look, it’s one or the other: either we’ve got Judeo-Christian values, in which case they’re our problem, or we don’t, in which case why bother worrying about people with inferior values.)
John, I’ve been thinking about this since you asked. I respect the International Crisis Group: they are very serious in their research and always deeply knowledgable about the conflicts they report on. This report is well worth reading, and will give you a sense of what quite a number of diplomats and analysts are debating. This is their conclusion:
The whole report is worth reading, because they’re not just coming up with that advice out of nowhere. But it isn’t their job to say “This is utterly hopeless,” so they’re grasping at straws, I think, in suggesting that a diplomatic overture to Moscow and Tehran might bear fruit. I’m all for trying, but nothing whatsoever in the recent (or historic) behavior of either Moscow or Tehran gives me any reason to feel optimistic on this score.
I agree completely that there is no way to destroy ISIS while ignoring the regime’s role in stoking the fire. Russia’s increased involvement will only serve to make a disaster even worse — they won’t be able decisively to intervene on Assad’s side and end the war. ISIS is infinitely self-replenishing as long as Assad survives.
Some of the migrants are Syrian refugees. More are economic migrants taking advantage of sympathy for the Syrian refugees.
What about in Iraq or North Africa or anywhere else ISIS cognates seem to be springing up? Do they all have Assad equivalents?
No, but certainly the carnage in Syria is central to the recruiting narrative. This is obviously not to say it’s the sole cause: Boko Haram antedates ISIS by more than a decade, so it’s ridiculous to say that Assad brought Boko Haram into being. But these groups are pledging their allegiance to ISIS because ISIS has been so spectacularly “successful” — by its own grim terms — and it’s been so successful because of Assad. (Blame to go around abounds — and obviously ISIS itself is to blame for ISIS — but ISIS needs Assad, and vice-versa: they’re the others’ raison d’être.)
Quite a life.
Here’s another report from RUSI (the Royal United Services Institute) with which I largely agree. That isn’t what you asked for: You asked if I could point you toward arguments with which I disagree but nonetheless respect. But this makes many of the arguments I’d make toward people who say things like, “The solution is arming proxies/bolstering the Kurds/doing nothing and hoping this burns out on its own” — and there are many people who say things like that. But the fact is, I don’t respect them, because I reckon they’re delusional.
You surprise me here. First off, cartelizing oil production between the two would make lots of sense. Also driving a wedge between SA and US tends to diminish US influence over Sunni heartland. Secondly, Iran is a competitor for influencing the Caucasus, so Russian influence with SA would afford them leverage with Iran…I mean one could probably think of several more reasons. Just making Russia a bigger player on the world stage works to stroke the ego of Russian people – hence advantaging Putin.