“The term ‘regime change refugees’ helps focus on where the primary
responsibility lies. It changes an empty conversation in the direction
of reality. Official discourse in Europe and the United States frames
the civil wars and economic turmoil in terms of fanaticism,
corruption, dictatorship, economic failures and other causes for which
Western governments and publics believe they have no responsibility.
The Western leaders and media stay silent about the military
intervention and regime change, interventions that have torn the
refugees’ homelands apart and resulted in civil war, state collapse
and extremely violent conditions lasting for long periods"
http://www.accuracy.org/release/regime-change-refugees/
Regime Change Refugees
September 11, 2015
The New York Times reports: “President Obama, under increasing
pressure to demonstrate that the United States is joining European
nations in the effort to resettle Syrian refugees, has told his
administration to take in at least 10,000 displaced Syrians over the
next year.”
The Canadian paper the Globe and Mail reports: “Western concerns over
the flood of refugees from Syria is obscuring the real problem in that
country, says a former senior United Nations official — the conflict
itself that has killed a quarter of a million people and forced half
the country’s population to flee their homes.
“‘Let me tell you,’ said Mokhtar Lamani, the UN and Arab League
representative in Damascus from 2012 to 2014, ‘if the war continues,
another eight million displaced people will also flee Syria and head
for the West.'”
JAMES PAUL, james.paul.nyc at gmail.com
Author of Syria Unmasked, Paul was executive director of Global Policy
Forum, a think tank that monitors the UN, for nearly 20 years. He was
also a longtime editor of the Oxford Companion to Politics of the
Worldand executive director of the Middle East Research and
Information Project.
He said today: “The huge flow of refugees into Europe has created a
political crisis in the European Union, especially in Germany, where
neo-nazi thugs battle police almost daily and fire-bombings of refugee
housing have alarmed the political establishment. There is also the
wider crisis in the EU over which countries will take in refuges and
how many. The public has been horrified by refugee drownings in the
Mediterranean, deaths in trucks and railway tunnels, thousands of
children and families, caught in the open, facing border fences and
violence from security forces. Religious leaders call for tolerance,
while EU politicians wring their hands and wonder how they can solve
the issue with new rules and more money.
“Meanwhile, the refugee flow has been increasing rapidly, with no end
in sight. The German government has estimated that it will take in
800,000 asylum-seekers during 2015. The overall flow into Europe for
the year will probably be well above a million. Germany and Sweden are
the main destinations.
“Fences cannot contain the desperate multitudes. A few billion euros
in economic assistance to the countries of origin, recently proposed
by the Germans, are unlikely to buy away the problem. Only a clear
understanding of the origins of the crisis can lead to an answer, but
European leaders do not want to touch this hot wire and expose their
own culpability. In the U.S., there is little sensible analysis
either.
“The migrants coming to Europe are mostly fleeing conflicts. The data
on origins make that clear. The migrants are coming primarily from
Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Pakistan in the Middle East, and
to a lesser extent from Eritrea, Somalia and Nigeria in Africa. These
are all countries with vicious conflicts — conflicts that (with the
exception of Nigeria) began with Western military intervention, direct
or indirect and continued to be fueled by intervention. In Libya,
Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia the intervention was very direct. In
Syria, Pakistan and Eritrea, it has been less direct but very clear
nonetheless.
“The term ‘regime change refugees’ helps focus on where the primary
responsibility lies. It changes an empty conversation in the direction
of reality. Official discourse in Europe and the United States frames
the civil wars and economic turmoil in terms of fanaticism,
corruption, dictatorship, economic failures and other causes for which
Western governments and publics believe they have no responsibility.
The Western leaders and media stay silent about the military
intervention and regime change, interventions that have torn the
refugees’ homelands apart and resulted in civil war, state collapse
and extremely violent conditions lasting for long periods.
“Some European leaders, the French in particular, are arguing in favor
of further military intervention in these war-torn lands on their
periphery as a way to ‘do something’ and (ironically) ‘end the
violence.’ Overthrowing Assad appears to be popular among the policy
classes in Paris, who choose to ignore how counter-productive their
overthrow of Gaddafi was just a short time ago and how
counter-productive has been their clandestine support in Syria for the
Islamist rebels. The intensive Western bombing campaign in Syria (now
joined by France), aimed in theory at the forces of the Islamic State,
are killing many civilians and further destabilizing the war-ravaged
country.
“The aggressive nationalist beast in the heart of the political class
of Europe and the United States is ready to engage in more military
adventures. These leaders are not ready to learn the lesson, or to
beware the ‘blowback’ from future interventions. This is why we need
to look closely at the ‘regime change’ angle, to beware upcoming
proposals for more intervention, and to increase public resistance to
further war. It is clear enough that the crisis of migration and war
has been ‘Made in Europe’ and ‘Made in USA.'”
Received on Sat Sep 12 2015 - 12:56:25 EDT