Refugee Crisis Reminds Europe There is a Real War in Syria
Refugees are not the problem; war is. If the war in Syria doesn’t stop, the flow of refugees will only continue. The refugee wave, marked by the dramatic image of tens of thousands of Syrians trying to reach Germany from Hungary, is a phenomenon that until very recently has been confused, perhaps deliberately, with mass migration. There is an important difference: migrations are frequently driven by financial or social exclusion. What is happening now in Europe is the inevitable consequence of unresolved crises in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Afghanistan – all related to the collapse of these countries’ respective states, the result of wars for which the West bears much responsibility.
Many of the Syrian refugees are ethnic Kurds. Most are escaping from Ayn al-Arab, located near the Syria-Turkey border. Kobane is another popular source. Both have been under attack or siege by Islamic State as the group tries to secure a ‘corridor’ between the area it controls and Turkish territory, which provides a source of fresh recruits and an outlet for oil extracted from Syrian fields. Recently, Turkey has changed its refugee strategy, now preferring to turn them away. Turkey has even blocked Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters who want to assist Kobane’s residents in defending the city, implying a de-facto, if not de-jure, collusion between Ankara and the Islamic State. Meanwhile, the majority of refugees stranded in Hungary are Syrians and while the Islamic State’s brutality has forced them to seek refuge in Europe, Western governments’ insistence on refusing to deal with the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, instead demanding its collapse, has prolonged the Syrian crisis.
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