generalspeaking

The Problem: No Solution

"If you want my real feeling, as a human being I am sorry for these refugees, but I have nine children of my own to take care of, so I am not happy at having all of them around here. It is crazy that the Turkish government is feeding them and that when they need medical care they are brought to a Turkish hospital near here." 
"I understand why the Syrians want to be around here. It is more stable."
Turkish farmer

The humanitarian provision of some bare level of accommodation to the fleeing millions of Syrian civilians, flooding inexorably across the border of war-torn Syria into Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon has created an internal crisis for those countries and a troubling concern about their own security should the fighting slop over the borders along with the desperate migrants. Tents, food, water and medicine is required for the desperate refugees.

Even with the assistance of the United Nations to assist in giving haven to the refugees, the burden inflicted on the affected countries is enormous. And the flood is not abating, it is increasing, just as the level of the violence in Syria is increasing, the battles becoming more fierce and determined. Thousands of new refugees cross the borders into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan daily.

Creating internal distraction. Creating situations of uncertainty. Creating incidents of violence threatening the sometimes-fragile stability of the helplessly welcoming countries that can do no other than to offer reluctant haven to desperate people who have seen too much death, who have suffered loss and privation, fear and terror.

The Syrian regime's reaction to the stubborn resistance of the Free Syrian Army militias and their background (and not-so-background) Islamist supporters who have gathered in defence of Sunni Islam from Tunisia, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere to practise their skills as mujahadeen, determined to see Sharia law enacted in a new Sunni-dominant Syria, has been brutally violent. The Islamist response has been equally brutal.

Russia, in supporting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, is anxious to repress the possibility of violent extremism through a jihadist victory in Syria. It sees no problem aligning itself with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Hezbollah, even while it is battling Islamists on its own home turf. Perhaps more to the point, because it is battling violent Islam within its own sovereign territory; witness Chechnya.

Resentment against the hordes of Syrian refugees that have swelled in refugee villages inside Syria's neighbours' territory is mounting. Syrians are resentful themselves of the reception they have received in some instances. And indigenous Jordanians for example, are resentful of the refugees undercutting them in jobs, and being responsible for an increase in foodstuffs and rents.

And then there is the 'jitters' effect. Those temporary (they hope) refugee camps set up inside Syria, but hovering on the borders of its neighbours. Harbouring rebel fighters among the civilians. Inviting clashes with the military. Where sometimes the regime's artillery lands across the border, threatening sovereignty and harm to indigenous border villages. Intolerable.

And there is the West, conflicted about how to react, what to do, how to intervene, whether to become involved and how. Britain feels that the rebels must be given greater access to arms, selectively, cutting out the Islamists, and good luck on that one -- but no boots on the ground, no aerial protection. The U.S. has no wish to mire itself once again and beggar its already depleted treasury on yet another Middle East war.

Accept the continued presence of a murderous tyrant, ruling with the iron fist of a conqueror, but who has managed to refrain from attacking his neighbours, while acknowledging that such an attack may yet eventuate given his alliance with the nuclear-seeking power of the Islamic Republic of Iran? Or bow to the pressure of human rights morality and rescue Syrians from their tyrant, in the process handing the country over to fundamentalist jihadists.

The positive element there would be the prospect of the Sunni jihadists battling the Shia Hezbollah terrorists. And Iran losing its triad of Iran-Syria-Lebanon hegemony. And there is the crux of the matter; whether to assent, in effect, to Iran's continued triumph in facing down the UN and the West with its determined fixation on nuclear weapons, leaving its axis intact.

Or giving satisfaction to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, leaving the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and Wahhabists in the ascendancy.

That is the question. The answer eludes.

Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Human Relations, Revolution, Security, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, April 27, 2013