The Refugee Crisis-A Tale of Insanity-in Two Acts

In all the frantic debate swirling around the current refugee crisis, we’ve lost track of how the horrors actually began--and how the crisis might be greatly alleviated.

It’s a tale of the world’s insanity, in two tragic acts.

First, came the slew of incredibly destructive political and military interventions of America—and some of its allies--in the Greater Middle East over the past few decades.

Other actors were also responsible, but the result was an eruption of violence and chaos, the unleashing of bloody tribal and sectarian strife throughout the region, infecting much of Africa as well.

It was as if a bunch of wealthy crazed arsonists decided to set a continent-sized forest ablaze. They’ve succeeded.

Fleeing those conflagrations, millions gathered their families and ran for their lives, seeking refuge in safer parts of their own countries—as in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan--or in neighboring states, like Jordan and Lebanon and Turkey and Pakistan.

We’re told that the great majority would like to remain in their regions, hoping to return home when conditions permit. Encouraging them to remain, hundreds of NGO’s and several agencies of the United Nations, established to cope with just such emergencies.  

The UN organizations lead in providing the basics —food, shelter, health care, schools—for refugees settled in sprawling camps, of, more often, in the surrounding communities where they’ve sought sanctuary.  

If you want to be totally cynical about it, view those UN agencies as maintaining a vast network of dams protecting the wealthy nations of the globe from the massive human inundation that would hit their shores if the refugees ever decided to flee their own regions.

In a rational world, the affluent states would cheer on the UN agencies and NGO’s, provide them with whatever funding they needed. After all, we’re talking about relatively paltry sums compared to the enormous amounts the wealthy of this planet spend on other more important matters—like weapons and war.

But our’s is not a rational world.

Which brings us to the second act of the tragedy.

At the very moment of greatest need, the waters rising higher than ever before, the U.N. agencies are being gutted, forced to lay off personnel, slash and cut fundamental programs, turn away millions of refugees who had been receiving vital aid; the heads of respected UN agencies literally begging the world for funds to carry on their crippled programs.  

So the dikes are collapsing, as the world had been warned for years they would. Understanding that they can no longer count on even temporary sanctuary in their own regions, hundreds of thousands of refugees are flooding towards Europe, advising and guiding one another through the new social media, and thus magnifying the surge.

The major source of refugees currently is Syria.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees appealed this year for $1.342 billion dollars to deal with Syrian refugees registered with them—now more than 4 million.

Yet, despite all the talk, the shocking pictures and lofty statements, the UNHCR is still short $795 million dollars, 59% of its goal.  “We are financially broke,” says High Commissoner António Guterres. “The damage being done by those cuts will be impossible to reverse. We know that we are not doing enough, we are failing the basic needs of people”

Another crippled UN agency is UNICEF, whose emphasis is on children. A spokesperson, Juliette Tourma, told me the organization is currently short $492 million to fund its programs for refugees inside Syria and around the region.  

One of UNICEF’s key aims is to provide education for refugee children up to 15 years of age, but because of the massive budgetary shortfalls they’ve had to make enormous cuts. “There is a huge funding gap,” Tourma says. “We can’t build new schools. Train new teachers. Which means 50% of the children under fifteen can’t go to school.”

The World Food Program also confronts a massive deficit, according to their spokesperson Abeer Etefa. “The problem is it’s always been a hand-to-mouth operation. There’s no fixed annual budgets. No guaranteed money that planners can count on.  In December last year, we actually had to suspend our operations. We ran completely out of money. We’ve had to totally cut aid to one third of the people we were assisting—760,000 were removed from the roles.

“Just in the past couple of months we’ve had to cut the value of the food vouchers we give people by 50%. It’s down now to $15.50 per month per person. That’s 50 cents per person per day!”

“So what do they do?” says Etefa, “They eat less, and cheaper food so that their children can eat more. The pull their children out of school to put them in the labor market, high-risk employment for low wages. They have less to spend on health and education and rent. Many are being evicted from their houses, forced to live in shacks or in the fields.”

“Some refugees living outside Syria, have decided to risk their lives and go back. Others tell us—‘listen if we cant feed our families or send our kids to school, if we’ve got no future in Syria and none here—then we will try to get to Europe, no matter what the risk.”

One Syrian refugee, Fatmeh, said of her two children in Lebanon: “When we can’t afford both medicine and food, I tie scarves around my boys’ bellies at night so they don’t wake up crying from stomach aches because they are hungry.” 

There is also the very real fear that embittered refugees will decide to join the ranks of ISIS.

Another sign of the insanity of the whole situation is that the amount that the countries of Europe are going to have to spend to integrate the new refugees into their new homelands is enormous compared to what it costs the UN to maintain them in their own regions.

Germany, for instance is going to be spending 6 billion Euros to deal with 800,000 new refugees. That’s more than four times greater than the $1.3 billion that the UNHCR needs to fund its program for 4 million Syrian refugees in and around Syria.

Germany, by the way, has given the UNHCR a total of $11 million so far this year.

The U.S. is by far the most the largest backer of the UNHCR, giving $113 million so far this year.. Very generous compared to most of the rest of the world. Yet trifling compared to the vast amounts Americacontinues to lavish on waging war in the Middle East. 

Take, for instance, the $492 million that UNICEF desperately needs. Sound like a lot?  In fact, the U.S. has thrown even more--$500 million—into a different kind of educational program—to train “moderate” soldiers to combat ISIS in Syria

The U.S. effort has been a colossal failure, producing some 60 soldiers, at a cost of $2.7 million dollars per man. Within a few days of their being deployed to Syria, almost all those “moderate” recruits had been killed or captured by more radical Syrian forces.  

Meanwhile the World Health Organization is frantically trying to raise $50 million to fund health care in Iraq. So far, they’ve only been able to find $5.1 million. 

Said Dr. Michelle Gayer of WHO, “it breaks your heart when you end services for 3 million people. There will be no access for trauma like shrapnel wounds, no access for children’s health or reproductive health. There will be no surveillance of things like cholera. A generation of children will be unvaccinated.”

$50 million to solve that problem? That’s what the U.S. spends every five days in the on-going, so far futile, air-war it’s waging against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

But what about the fabulously wealthy states of the Gulf?  It’s well known that their doors are closed to desperate fellow Arabs from places like Syria and Iraq. But what kind of financial support are they offering to the U.N. agencies concerned?

As a donor, Kuwait is something of an exception. It has given $101 million to the UNHCR this year. On the other hand, the Kuwaitis have also funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to some of the most extreme fighting groups in Syria, to the point that furious U.S. officials went public last year in an attempt to oblige them to turn off the spigot.

And just .2% of Kuwait’s vast sovereign wealth fund of almost $600 billion, would cover the entire UNHCR budget for the year. 

Still, to its modest credit, Kuwait’s backing for the UNHCR’s Syrian relief program is greater than all the other Gulf states combined.

Start with the Saudis. With the support of the U.S. The Saudis have launched a devastating bombing campaign against Yemen, the poorest country in the region. The Saudis have also spent enormous sums arming radical Islamic fighters in Syria, financing schools across the Muslim world that preach the radical Wahabi faith preaching hatred of Shiites, very much akin to the views of ISIS.

 This year the Saudis, who also spent $80 billion dollars on weaponry last year, have given $2.7 million to the UNHCR. Nothing so far to UNICEF.

The UAE, whose sovereign wealth fund is  $773 billion, have given $2,247 million to the UNHCR.

Qatar, which has also been a major backer of radical Islamic fighters in Syria, which has by far the highest per capita income in the world ($143,000) Qatar this year has given the UNHCR $300,000.—a little more than the combined per capita income of two of its citizens.

But where, in all the raging debates about how to handle the refugee catastrophe, is there any mention at such absurdities---and of the perilous—we could say terrifying—predicament of the UN Agencies.

If the world came to its senses, the situation could be vastly improved. ISIS may not be destroyed, but the UN Agencies could be set back on their feet.

That in itself would be a huge victory.

Opulent Arabs Fuel Syrian Hell, Stiff Syrian Refugees

The cataclysm in Syria has created the worst refugee crisis the world has known since the end of the World War II.  This, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UNHCR, which has prime responsibility for coping with the 3.9 million men women and children who have fled the on-going horrors.

Ironically, the tragedy is unfolding almost at the doorstep of some of the most colossally wealthy people on the planet who preside over the oil-rich states of the Gulf.

In deed, with far less than 1% of their mammoth sovereign funds, almost any of the Gulf States could have provided, on their own tab, all of the $1.266 billion dollars that the UNHCR attempted—and failed--to raise last year for Syrian refugee relief.

In 2014, the UNHCR campaign ended up 37% short of its goal.

 One would think that those fabulously blessed royals and sheikhs and emirs would have been lining up to back the UNHCR’s attempts to mitigate the catastrophe that has overtaken millions of their mostly Sunni Arab brethren.

Especially since those same Gulf states also provided the arms and money that fueled so much of the horrific violence.

But one would be largely wrong.

As a donor, Kuwait was something of an exception. It gave $93 million to the UNHCR in 2014, the third largest contribution after the United States ($303 million) and the European Union ($146 million).

On the other hand, the Kuwaitis have also funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to some of the most extreme fighting groups in Syria, to the point that furious U.S. officials went public last year in an attempt to oblige them to turn off the spigot.

Yet, to its modest credit, Kuwait’s backing for the UNHCR’s Syrian relief program is greater than all the other Gulf states combined.

It’s not that the recent dramatic drop in oil prices has emptied those Arab coffers.

The Qataris, for instance, bankrolled by a huge sovereign wealth fund estimated at $250 billion, continue snapping up trophy hotels, football clubs, businesses, and huge hunks of prime real estate across the globe. Just in Paris, among many other assets, they own Le Printemps department store, the Peninsula Hotel, Raffles Royal Monceau, and 350,000 square feet along the Champs Elysees.

In London they’ve also bought up much of the skyline, from the towering Shard to Harrods, to No. 1 Hyde Park, to a massive swathe of Canary Wharf, not to mention 20% of the London Stock Exchange, and 10% of the company that owns British Air. They even helped keep Barclays Bank afloat during the height of the financial crisis.

The Qataris have also been among the most aggressive in doling out funds to radical groups fighting in Syria. They are thus also directly implicated in the on-going disaster.

How much did the Qataris, with the second highest annual per capita income in the world ($104,000), give to that campaign?

They gave $26 million-- far less than Germany ($42.3 million) or Japan ($34 million).

That was also far less than the $58 million fine that the Qatari ruling family were ordered to pay for an illegal scheme they used to avoid paying taxes on a prime 13 acre London site they bought from the British Ministry of Defense, for a cool $1.5 billion.

(Don’t even ask about the $120 million that Qatar's armed forces shelled out to purchase the Renaissance Hotel in Barcelona.)

On the other hand, the Qataris were far more open-handed to the UNHCR’s Syrian campaign than were other Gulf rulers.

The royals who run the United Arab Empire control a sovereign wealth fund of $773 billion that dwarfs Quatar’s. They also boast a stunning capital (Abu Dhabi) that Forbes labeled “So Blindingly Rich it’s almost Sickening.” Their donation last year to the UNHCR’s drive?

$4.8 million. Far less than Finland. ($7.84 million)

Then there’s the Saudis.

Their new ruler, King Salman, has been shoring up his own position and that of his sprawling family with a mammoth post coronation give away that so far totals more than $32 billion and has been lavished over most of his country’s population.

According to the New York Times, for the moment at least, there is little talk about human rights abuses or political reform. Saudis are spending. Some have treated themselves to new cellphones, handbags and trips abroad. They have paid off debts, given to charity and bought gold necklaces for their mothers. Some men have set aside money to marry a first, second or third wife. One was so pleased that he showered his infant son with crisp new bills. 

The Saudis have also been very generous to the new military regime in Egypt: Along with other Gulf States, they came up with $12 billion to back the government of General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi after it tossed out the Muslim Brotherhood, detested and feared by the Saudis. The Saudis have promised billions more. 

Under Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the cowboy head of Saudi Intelligence until he was removed in April, 2014, the Saudis also funneled huge amounts of arms and money to some of the most militant groups battling Syria's Assad—including the fighters from ISIS, who they cheered on in Iraq.

But for the UNHCR’s Syrian refugee program?

In 2014, the Saudis gave a total $2.9 million. Which wouldn’t buy you a decent one bedroom apartment in Belgravia these days.

 Even tiny Denmark gave more ($6.2 million).

That was last year. How is the UNHCR’s Syrian refugee campaign doing so far this year as the crisis becomes even more horrific?

 For 2015, the UNHCR is attempting to raise $1.342 billion.

 As of February 16, with TV broadcasting images of ragged, poorly sheltered Syrian children dying of exposure, the UNHCR has received pledges totalling a scant $74 million--only 6% of the amount needed.

The U.S. has yet to make its commitment.

The largest donors to step up to date are Canada ($10, 318,143) and the European Union ($51 million).

 And the Saudis, with their new munificent ruler? They’ve pledged $2.773,000, less than the amount they gave last year. The UAE has promised $2,247 million, also far less than last year.

 But more than Qatar…which has come up with $209,000.

 Not even the price of a decent crocodile handbag at Aspreys.

 (It would be interesting to see if these facts were picked up by Al Jazeera--also owned by Qatar.)

Charlie Hebdo: A trap for France

One of the editorial cartoons provoked by the Charlie Hebdo attack depicts an airplane flying towards two gigantic pencils, evoking the horrific 2001 attack on the twin towers. Indeed, many here view the attack on the French satirical weekly as France’s 9/11.

Which is exactly what the terrorists want.

What would truly be a disaster now would be for France (and Europe) to react to the Charlie Hebdo attack in the same blind, mindless fashion that America’s leaders reacted to 9/11. Nothing would more benefit al-Qaeda and its modern spin-offs.

The U.S. reaction plunged America into horrendously bloody and incredibly expensive conflicts on the other side of the globe with peoples and cultures it knows precious little about. More than twelve years later, America’s drones and Special Forces are scattered over the planet. Though Bin Laden was long ago killed, like a cancerous cell, al-Qaeda—and its even more brutal spin-offs—have spread across the Middle East and Africa. For every jihadi leader killed in Yemen, Somalia, Mali or Iraq, ten more seem to take their place.

Just as disastrous, America’s own vaunted traditions of freedom and liberty have also been victims to the overwrought reaction to 9/11.

Meanwhile, many of the U.S. reactions, like the widespread use of drones and the shame of Guantanamo—have been al-Qaeda’s best recruiting posters.

Indeed, one of the two brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attack claimed back in 2005 when he was arrested for recruiting French jihadis to fight in Iraq against the U.S., that he’d been provoked to action by photos of American soldiers torturing Muslim prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

It’s thus naïve to think that the only motive for the attack on Charlie Hebdo was to exact vengeance for the publication of cartoons mocking  Mohammed. As Juan Cole has pointed out, by far the more important goal was to inflame the already volatile sentiments of race and religion in France—as well as the rest of Europe.

The strategy being to strengthen the far right movements of formerly shunned xenophobic leaders like Marine Lepen, who have long campaigned against immigration and warned darkly of the coming Muslim takeover of France and the rest of Europe.

At the same time, by provoking widespread repression and islamophobia, the terrorists hope to convince France’s Muslims that they no longer have a place in the nation. In fact, the great majority of those Muslims, though on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder and often discriminated against, have long shunned radical Islam. Despite everything, they have insisted on identifying themselves as French above all.

It would be a tragedy if that were to change.

Despite the impressive popular demonstrations of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and France’s democratic traditions, there have also been a rising number of attacks on Muslim targets, and calls from the right for action.

As I have previously written, many now feel that their country is at war with radical Islam. The danger is that, despite the warnings of editorialists and political leaders, in that “war” the distinctions will get blurred—the distinctions between a radical Islamists advocating terror, and Muslims as a whole.

The danger is that, over the coming days, French leaders, reacting to public fear and outrage, and desperate to compete with Marine Le Pen, will push for ever more Draconian measures against immigrants in general, Muslims in particular. Those newly radicalized Muslim youth would provide more recruits for jihad.

But what can the French authorities do?  The two brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attacks were already well known to French police. Incredibly, both were also on the no-fly list in the United States. Similarly, Mohammed Merah, another young French Muslim of Algerian decent who shot down seven people near Toulouse in 2013, had also been on the French police’s watch list.

The problem is there are perhaps thousands of young Muslims in this country who have any kind of links with jihad. What’s to be done? Put them all in some kind of preventative detention? Deport them all? French citizens? For what crime?

For years, French leaders have talked about creating more jobs to help assimilate the millions of young unemployed Muslims into French society? Little has been done. France’s economy is a shambles. The unemployment is rate more than 10%, probably 30% in the poorer banlieues.

Meanwhile, France which has a huge budget deficit, now has more than 3500 troops combating radical Islamic groups in the wilds of the Sahel of North Africa, and other contingents in Djibouti, the Central African Republic, and Afghanistan.

Not to mention French fighter planes taking part in sorties against ISIS in Iraq. (That’s an ultimate irony or sorts: In 2003 one of the reasons George W.Bush gave for invading Iraq was that Saddam was linked to al-Qaeda. That turned out to be false. Eleven years later however, largely due to the political devastation wrought by the U.S. and its aftermath, ISIS a more violent group than al-Qaeda itself, controls a huge swathe of the country. ) 

Bottom line, France today is at a desperate turning point. Its leaders must somehow crack down on the undeniable threat of jihad from French Muslims, without at the same time alienating millions of its Muslim citizens who have nothing to do with radical Islam.

They must continue to emphasize the unity of the nation, resist the mounting calls for Draconian new laws, and the temptation to adopt the islamophobic slogans of the far right. They must also avoid getting mired even deeper into military adventures into distant lands.

If they fail, they play right into the hands of those who carried out the horrific attack on Charlie Hebdo this week.  

A much tougher and long–term challenge is for the Islamic world to carry out the kind of modernizing transformation that a few—but nearly not enough--of their leaders have been advocating for years. Who knows how long that could take?