America & UK - Response to 'Refugee Crisis'

ꕤ Article SOURCE http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/where-americas-response-middle-east-refugee-crisis-89876193#sthash.TTVXD7DE.dpuf Where is America's response to the Middle East refugee crisis? Peter Van Buren Friday 18 September 2015 16:55 UTC The answer lies in empty rhetoric from those who began America's wars in the region under the guise of humanitarian intervention. A searing image of a refugee child lying dead on a beach finally alerted the world to a crisis now entering its fifth year. Awareness is never bad, but here it too easily bypasses the question of where all the refugees come from, in favour of a simpler meme. One is reminded of Malala, one story that pushes aside millions. Such narratives bait a familiar trap: the need to “do something”. That “something” in the Middle East is often the clumsy hand of military intervention under the thin cover of humanitarian rhetoric. Cries answered that way have a terrible history of exacerbating a problem they ostensibly set out to solve. The scope of the problem is staggering. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, there are more than three million Syrian refugees in the Middle East. Inside Syria itself, over 17 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, including those internally displaced. Only 350,000 Syrians are estimated to have travelled to Europe. They are the ones you see on television. In Iraq, some 1.8 million people were displaced between January and September 2014, a declared United Nations emergency, and Iraqis are currently the second-largest refugee group in the world. Yet even now the New York Times speaks of a "new wave" of Iraqi refugees, driven in part by "years of violence and unmet promises for democracy by a corrupt political elite". The situation in Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere is much the same. There is a common denominator behind all of these refugee flows: they are, in whole or in part, the product of American "humanitarian interventions". In 2003, President George W. Bush declared the goals of the United States in invading Iraq included freeing its people. In case that was not clear enough, in 2007 Bush proclaimed the American military the "greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known". Yet by 2007 the number of displaced persons in Iraq had grown by some 50 percent. President Barack Obama used similar rhetoric in 2014, when he revived the United States' war in Iraq in response to a "humanitarian crisis that could turn into a genocide" for the Yazidi people. “One Iraqi cried that there is no one coming to help,” President Obama said at the time. “Well, today America is coming to help.” A senior administration official went on to explicitly describe the action as a humanitarian effort. Some 5,000 airstrikes later, that humanitarian effort is now a bloody war with Islamic State, metastasized across multiple nations, exacerbating the refugee flow. For the Yazidis, long-forgotten by Americans as the no longer needed casus belli, the war enveloped them in Islamic State's slave trade. The conflict in Syria remains connected to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, in the form of militarised Sunni militias which took up arms, the growth of al-Qaeda and its off-shoots in Iraq, and of course the birth of Islamic State. Add to that the elimination of any effective border between Iraq and Syria to allow those forces to flow freely back and forth. American intervention in Syria ratcheted up seemingly on a schedule, all around the theme of saving the Syrian people from their dictator, Bashar al-Assad (similarities to George W Bush's 2003 wording in reference to Saddam Hussein are noted). After it appeared Assad used chemical weapons in 2013, it was American Secretary of State John Kerry who insisted that it was “not the time to be silent spectators to slaughter”. Airstrikes were forestalled for a time, then popped up in 2014 aimed not at Assad, but at Islamic State. Chaos has gone on to drawn numerous foreign powers into the conflict. With Libya in 2011, there was again a "humanitarian effort," led by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton sold intervention as a necessity: “Imagine we were sitting here and Benghazi had been overrun, a city of 700,000 people, and tens of thousands of people had been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands had fled. The cries would be, ‘Why did the United States not do anything?’” That “doing something” helped push Libya into failed state status, feeding the refugee flow and bleeding conflict into neighbouring countries. It is foolish to claim the United States alone "caused" all of these refugee flows; multiple factors, including the aggressiveness of Islamic State, are in play. But it would be equally foolish to ignore American culpability, directly in Iraq and in Libya, and via arms flows and the fanning of flames, in Syria and Yemen. The common element is a stated intent to make things better.  The common result is the opposite. To many, particularly outside the United States, political rhetoric is just the aural garbage of imperialism. But inside the United States, military “humanitarian” intervention generally enjoys robust support. It may look like a shoddy product to some, but people continue to buy it, and thus it continues to happen. Politicians seem to know how to feed the public's demands to “do something” triggered by an emotional photograph for their own purposes. There exists an inverse relationship between those that create refugees and those who help them. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees referred 15,000 Syrians to Washington for resettlement over the last four years; the United States accepted only 1,500, citing, among other issues, concerns over terrorists hiding among the groups. But that was then, pre-photo. Post-photo, with no apparent irony, United States Senator Patrick Leahy stated the refugee crisis “warrants a response commensurate with our nation’s role as a humanitarian leader”. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States is “looking hard at the number” of additional Syrian refugees it might accommodate, given America's “leadership role with respect to humanitarian issues and particularly refugees”. Right on schedule following Kerry's remarks, President Obama promised, per the New York Times headline, to "Increase Number of Syrian Refugees for US Resettlement to 10,000." With the problem seemingly solved, albeit only 10,000 out of millions, the plight of the refugees disappeared from America's front pages. Left unsaid was the emptiness of even such non-military humanitarian rhetoric. President Obama did not mention, nor was he asked about, the reality that refugees to the US are processed, not accepted. That processing can take years (the average out of Syria is two years at present), indefinite if enough information on a person's security background cannot be amassed. If a positive "up" decision cannot be made that a person is "safe," then the default is indefinite pending status. Such a conundrum has, for example, stymied the applications of many Iraqis and Afghanis who served as translators for the American military and fear for their lives, only to have been left behind. There also remain voices calling for another escalation of war in the Middle East to deal with the “root causes” of the refugee crisis, loosely defined for now as Islamic State's continued existence. There is an immediate need to do more to help the refugees moving into Europe, and those still in the Middle East. That, and that alone, should comprise the “do something” part of a solution. Long term, if the primary response is simply more military intervention in the name of humanitarianism, or more empty promises, the answer is best left as “doing less”. - Peter Van Buren is a retired 24-year veteran of the US Department of State, including service in Iraq. He is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent. He lives and writes from New York City. http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/where-americas-response-middle-east-refugee-crisis-89876193#sthash.TTVXD7DE.dpuf ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Military 'interventions' abroad are nothing to do with 'humanitarian' concerns.  Even if the media and those in power pretend they are. The bottom line is strategic aims & profit making.  Nothing more. I don't think politicians in the US actually feed a demand to 'do something,' following political and media exploitation of emotive imagery. In my opinion, it is more a case of providing themselves with a pretext for the acts that they intend to perform, rather than some general public overwhelming care-factor demanding US action. USA takes 15,000 refugees in 4 YEARS and then accepts only 1,500. Meanwhile look at what Europe, particularly Germany and Sweden, are taking in -- despite opposition.  Sweden and Germany are the biggest American puppets in Europe, and they're selling out their domestic populations for the Yankee Dollar. Australia has pledged as follows: "It will also pay to support 240,000 people who have fled Iraq and Syria and are now living in neighboring countries, a cost expected to run $44 million Australian dollars, or $31 million."  Australia currently resettles about 13,750 people annually under humanitarian visas, a number scheduled to increase to 18,750 by 2018-19. The 12,000 places will be in addition to that quota, Mr. Abbott’s office said. [here] Therefore, Australia is taking 138,750 persons between 2015-2019 (inclusive), by my estimation. So the Liberal government  that's punishing the Australian unemployed, pensioners, homeless, and Australian families queued up for public housing, finds millions per annum towards mopping up the consequences of US and allied 'intervention' abroad. Meanwhile, Australian opposition politicians are calling on the Liberal government to do 'more' in the way of mop-up operations.  Obama, the current American stage manager of this entire Middle Eastern disaster, is only taking 10,000 (of which he'll be tossing 8,500 back).  What a rort. Kerry's come up with the 'looking hard' to 'see how many more' they can accommodate.  Brilliant move.  I can just see him sucking in some air while he's saying that. Obama says 10,000 ... but of that, expect them to actually take only 1,500, going by past record. This is insane. It's insane to create all this chaos in the first place.  And it's just as insane to expect various domestic populations to absorb the resulting mayhem, particularly given the disruption to native populations in Europe. The cowardice of the European politicians is astounding. This has been an ongoing problem for years now -- see Lampedusa -- locals were fed up with the non-stop arrivals from Africa, years ago. The European politicians would have known exactly what is going on, but they did nothing. We're talking about people that run countries and people who have advisers and a wealth of information and experience, not ordinary people who have no idea and no say. Yet they did nothing. Instead of setting up refugee facilities in situ in the Middle East and in Africa and instead of securing European borders, they've sat on this for years doing nothing but standing by letting this chaos home in on their domestic fronts.  Now, they've not only let Europe get swamped by a massive surge of uncontrolled immigration from all over, Germany's Angela Merkel went that step further and invited the chaos by announcement a month ago, probably to give Dave Cameron and the rest of the sell-out European politicians a face-saver excuse for taking on-board yet more alien arrivals. Check out Dave Cameron's slick apportioning of blame to Bashar al-Assad, whose government he and his corporate friends have been trying to depose for years now. Dave Cameron and his partners in crime have created the chaos in Syria by supporting terrorists, in order to take down the Syrian government.  And the chaos of their making isn't confined to Syria:  there's several countries that have been targets of Western 'intervention'. Dave Cameron's government (as America's second banana in the Middle East), acting on behalf of interests that have nothing to do with the average Briton, is responsible for creation of this mess.  But why should the chaos that these corrupt politicians create abroad become the financial and social burden placed upon the average Briton or European, whose present and future living conditions are detrimentally impacted? British and European vulnerable and working classes are punished by the aggressive foreign policies of these well-heeled corporate-serving politicians, who don't have to live with the immediate or future chaos they create at home (or abroad), as theirs is the buffer of wealth and privilege. You'll hear them and their media representatives exhort that there's a 'moral obligation' to bend over and take more of what they're serving up as a side dish to corporate servitude. As if these corporate puppet politicians give a damn about 'moral obligation'.   They're all the same.  They all serve the same interests. People need to resist and tell these middle-class lawyer-politicians to shove off.  Tell these representatives of corporate greed to make alternative arrangements for the consequences of their wars and proxy wars overseas -- arrangements that don't involve sucking up public funds, straining public amenities, or causing social problems for which there is no remedy. If governments acting for corporate interests want to pillage resources the world over to enrich Western corporate beneficiaries of capitalism and the parasites that attach, there's probably not much that can be done to prevent that without imposing an alternate economic and power structure (on a state and power structure that will not relinquish power willingly), which is unlikely to happen. However, I think domestic populations ought to at least come to consider such ventures as an external cost to be strictly borne by corporate beneficiaries, rather than funded by the state, underwritten by taxpayers, or subsequently imposed as a 'crisis' on the then domestically displaced and punished vulnerable and working class populations. That sounds really mercenary, but I don't see what the alternative might be.   Apart from maybe also campaigning against war and applying as much pressure to that, as applying pressure to maintenance of cultural and economic standards.  Demanding cultural integrity and economic security should be straightforward.  But it's not.   But people should at least consider demanding their due, making military interventions an unattractive business plan, the consequences of which are not going to be willingly mopped up by obliging domestic populations. To my way of thinking, it makes far more sense to forget the promised nirvana of universalism evangelised by missionaries, and to demand what is essential to survival, in this world. UK to take up to 20,000 Syrian refugees over five years, David Cameron confirms Britain is to respond to the refugee crisis facing Europe by taking 20,000 refugees from the camps on the borders of Syria over the next five years, David Cameron has announced. Cameron told the House of Commons the UK would “live up to its moral responsibility” towards people forced from their homes by the forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the Islamic State terror group. The prime minister said the refugees would not immediately be granted full asylum status, giving them a right to settle, but instead a humanitarian status that will allow them to apply for asylum at the end of five years. [...] The European commission is understood to be preparing to ask EU member states to take part in a mandatory scheme to resettle 160,000 migrants who have already arrived on the continent. The French president, François Hollande, has said France is ready to take in 24,000 people. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/07/uk-will-accept-up-to-20000-syrian-refugees-david-cameron-confirms    Britain current refugees:  30,000 DAVID Cameron’s promise to take in 20,000 Syrian immigrants will spark a deep North/South divide across Britain with a single working class northern town taking more refugees than the entire affluent South East region. EXTRACTS Staggeringly just four towns within a few miles of each other - Bolton, Liverpool, Rochdale and Manchester - would become home to 2,903 refugees alone. "Little or no regard is given to the impact from the moment new arrivals move in – in terms of ongoing costs to vital local support services, like schools and GPs – or the impact on the neighbourhood. "The prime concern of the bean counters is to get this done as cheaply as possible and housing costs represent a significant part of the bill from accepting asylum seekers. "We know that when unmanaged and not properly understood, community change of any kind can lead to tensions which affect both the area hosting the new arrivals and those seeking safe refuge themselves.  "If government fails, they fail us all." "Since 2012, when the contract for managing the distribution of asylum seekers was handed to Serco, the number of asylum seekers in the North West has risen by 50% but fallen by 20% in London. Home Office currently uses private contractor Serco to home people seeking asylum in Britain, but not those who have already been granted refugee status. It is not yet clear whether or not the company will be used to allocate the 20,000 Syrians Mr Cameron has promised sanctuary to. http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/604769/Migrant-crisis-north-England-David-Cameron-Syrian-refugees Other Serco Group plc British outsourcing company HQ Hook, Hampshire Operates public and private transport and traffic control, aviation, military weapons, detention centres, prisons and schools on behalf of its customers. "There has been a history of problems, failures, fatal errors and overcharging." Defence Serco held defence contracts in 2004, including the UK Government's contract for the maintenance of the UK Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales; contracts are also held for the operation and maintenance of RAF Brize Norton, RAF Halton and RAF Northolt in the UK and RAF Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic.  Serco also provides support services to garrisons in Australia.  Serco also manages many aspects of operations at the Defence College of Management and Technology in Shrivenham.  Serco is one of three partners in the consortium which manages the Atomic Weapons Establishment.  Serco also has a 15-year contract worth £400 million to provide facilities management services to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Serco Marine Services is responsible for fleet support at the three main UK naval bases, HMNB Portsmouth, HMNB Devonport and HMNB Clyde. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serco Serco is failing, but is kept afloat thanks to Australia's refugee policy Antony Loewenstein EXRACTS Serco shares dive after scandal According to Rupert Soames’s script, Serco will emerge in 2017 as a smaller and sharper operator. On the way, though, operating profits will fall as low as £100m. Tuesday 11 November 2014 12.41 AEDT   It’s a sign of the times that a company like Serco, with murky financial statements masking its true economic shape, is continually rewarded for failure by new and larger contracts Revealingly, the corporation admitted that without its Australian detention network, its profit would have been even worse. In other words, imprisoning asylum seekers in poor conditions for extended periods of time in remote locations is good for business. Serco won the contract to manage all of Australia’s mainland facilities and Christmas Island in 2009 – I was part of a team that first published the contract between Serco and Canberra in 2011 – and the profits have soared ever since. From a $370m contract in 2009 to well over $1bn today, surging refugee boats have been invaluable to Serco’s bottom line. Serco has benefitted from an opaque reporting process and desperate federal politicians and bureaucrats who needed corporate help with an immigration system that ran out of control when asylum seekers started arriving in large numbers from Sri Lanka, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and beyond. Neither the government nor Serco could handle the influx, and both detainees and guards suffered. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/11/serco-is-failing-but-is-maintained-afloat-thanks-to-australias-refugee-policy  Comment The amount of taxpayer money the Australian government spends on keeping unauthorised immigration at bay is staggering. Why is it that all those lawyer-politicians swanning around Canberra cannot come up with a simple proposal that says something like:  Nah. Take Israel as an example (and precedent) for bailing from international treaty: Although Israel has signed the 1998 Rome Statute on 28 August 2002, the Secretary-General received from the Government of Israel, the following communication: "...in connection with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court adopted on 17 July 1998, [...] Israel does not intend to become a party to the treaty. Accordingly, Israel has no legal obligations arising from its signature on 31 December 2000. Israel requests that its intention not to become a party, as expressed in this letter, be reflected in the depositary's status lists relating to this treaty."  [here]  [those dates are conflicting ie signed:  28 Aug 2002 & 31 Dec 2000 ... which is it?] Once again, Israel is sane where other nations -- Australia, in this case -- appear positively insane for going through the expensive motions of what should be a very simple. Withdrawal is a sound solution to an obligation that does not serve one's national interests. Anyone who thinks it's in Australia's national interests to show any weakness whatsoever in respect of unauthorised immigration is insane. The desires of gullible well-meaning Christian grannies, saviours, martyrs, missionaries, intellectuals, and champaign socialists don't translate at all well in terms of the demands of concrete reality. ꕤ