Syria refugee crisis – brave leadership required

The confused and panicked reaction of various European nations to the Syrian refugee crisis brings to mind an image of headless chickens running about in all directions.

During my time spent in Europe over the summer, I was shocked by the hostile and often racist tenor of much of the media coverage of this issue. There was often an ability to distinguish between Syrians fleeing from unimaginable horrors; and economic migrants with completely different motivations and aspirations.

Then European public opinion was pulled in a totally different direction by the harrowing image of a dead Syrian infant washed up on the beach – as if it was the first time for many to wake up to the prospect that Syrian children had really died!

We are then treated to the unedifying image of Western politicians haggling over how many refugees they could accept. Britain’s Prime Minister managed to sound generous by offering to take 20,000 over five years, but when you do the maths, this amounts to different regions of the UK, week-on-week, absorbing just a handful of people. Britain’s offer is tied up in complex provisions. For example; only accepting refugees hand-picked from the states bordering on Syria; with the costs of this programme to be met by slashing Britain’s overseas aid budget. Meanwhile, states like Germany have been relatively more welcoming.

Compare this, however, with the tiny state of Lebanon, which has opened its borders to well over a million Syrians, embroiling itself in the tensions of the Syria conflict in the process. Turkey, Jordan and Iran, likewise, are bearing a huge humanitarian burden in hosting many of the millions of Syrians who have fled.

We now hear that because of cuts in food assistance provided by organizations like the World Food Programme, many desperate Syrians in countries like Jordan and Turkey are forced to choose between trying to escape to Europe, or returning home to an active war zone.

There have been attempts to point fingers at the Gulf States, as if the European refugee crisis is the result of a GCC failure to accept those in need. However, Saudi Arabia alone has quietly absorbed an estimated half million Syrians and two million Yemenis and there is a comparable picture in other Gulf states, which today host substantial numbers of Syrian nationals – We hope that they will continue to be receptive to those in need from the Syrian conflict.

Over the last four years Western nations have covered their eyes and hoped that the Syrian conflict would go away. The crisis always seemed too difficult and insoluble. At first diplomats suggested that it was futile to get involved because Syrians didn’t want outside interference and Al-Assad could only last another six months or so at the most.

When this turned out to be false, there were half-hearted efforts at a peace process. Enough support was provided for Syrian fighters to keep the pot boiling, but not enough for them to be a viable and unified force. When all diplomatic maneuvres failed, it was all too easy to blame Russia, which continued to bankroll Al-Assad unimpeded. Meanwhile, Iran has been given a free hand to provide arms, troops and support to Al-Assad’s genocidal campaign.

Then Western diplomats spoke of their shock and astonishment when Daish swept all before them across Syria and Western Iraq, as if there had been a complete intelligence failure at the prospect that jihadists would fill the vacuum across the centre and east of Syria.

We could go on in far greater detail, but it is transparently obvious that a large part of the responsibility for the situation we are in today is the result of a collective diplomatic failure to get to grips with the Syrian conflict. Perhaps a more assertive role in establishing safe havens in Syria and choking of channels of support to Al-Assad in the early stages of the conflict would have prevented the chaos which allowed ISIS to emerge.

Now the challenge is far greater, with humanitarian organizations warning that a further million Syrians could flee over the coming months. We can sympathize with the difficult choices facing diplomats – with Syria there are no easy decisions or solutions. But this does not excuse the failure of America and the West for failing to take decisions on Syria over these past years.

America’s role has been so lamentable that the handful of Syrian fighters which they eventually did agree to train and equip were almost immediately mopped up by ISIS – a perfect example of the policies of token gestures and attempts to put sticking plaster over a gaping wound.

Syrians don’t want to be settling in Britain and Germany. They want the conditions to be right to go back and settle safely with their families in Syria. However, a failure to address the conflict will give rise to hundreds of thousands of desperate people seeking refuge in Europe, risking their lives in nearly suicidal journeys across the Mediterranean in tiny and unseaworthy vessels.

The shocking thing is, that despite the huge political storm across Europe as a result of the refugee issue, we have yet to see anything like a coherent Western policy towards Syria. Some European leaders talk about bombing ISIS or Assad, as if this would be a magic solution to the crisis. However, in the absence of a broader vision for Syria, any such punitive bombing campaigns would probably only worsen the humanitarian and refugee crises, forcing more people from their homes.

Only four years too late we see some vague speculation about safe zones and humanitarian corridors. However, even here, the preference would obviously be to leave this burden to states like Turkey who may exploit such an approach to pursue their own vindictive policies against groups like the Kurds and broaden their own spheres of interests.

GCC nations have continually signaled their frustration at the feeble and zigzagging Western approach to Syria. Now is the time for the international community to bravely rethink the Syria crisis. Not with international peace conferences whose objectives have failed before they’ve even started – but with a determined, multifaceted and forward-thinking approach, which forces an end to the fighting; provides safety and relief to Syrian citizens and helps put in place a stable and democratic blueprint for Syria’s future.