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| Syrian Refugees Displaced in the Middle East |
Being stationed in Turkey during the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, I saw the beginning of the problems that would come around to affect the region and elsewhere in the past year is in the lack of apathy towards normal human beings displaced by conflict that started beyond their control. As the years of the conflict continues, can you really blame people by getting hopeless of the detoriated situation in their home country and not seek out stable, greener pastures in North America or Europe.
People advocating closing borders, naturalization quotas, etc. really have no idea what the consequences of those actions will be. Imagine yourself as one of those four million Syrians that had to flee a full-fledged war that ended any resemblance of a normal life for the foreseeable future.
Now, the first option is to flee towards Syrian government-controlled territory through a violent frontline gunfight and become another number to the casualty count or be mistaken for the enemy. On the other hand, you become part of one of the many rebel groups, depending on your ideological leanings from moderate Free Syrian Army to complete radical Islamic State and arm yourself with a Kalashnikov with them. Or... if you not wanting to be part of the shitfest and try to have an early death, you could flee to somewhere deemed safe like a refugee camp or relatives in a "safe" city before being forced into either faction. If you chose the last option, congrats, you just joined four million like-minded people.
As the conflict lengthened, as in any historic conflict, people affect start to move to "more stable" bordering countries to escape the violence. However, as you find soon enough that becoming a refugee isn't a great option either. Most nations bordering modern conflicts are barely stable as well and you're among thousands of your fellow people in an overcrowded and underfunded refugee camp.
This is where the first stage of normal human resentment is going to occur. Host country people have little sympathy to the turmoil next door, I could tell you that being in Turkey, you could a Syrian from a Turk based on treatment alone. Being a refugee, you have almost no rights to really doing anything useful than to simply continue existing. The whole mindset of "they're out to get our jobs" isn't just limited to America, it's really everywhere else too.
Being a refugee, is just a normal human wanting access to the opportunity to start anew while waiting out the turmoil to finish in their home country. Instead, refugees are embroidered into a limbo of bureaucracy of asylum-seeking and very restrictive economic mobility. So imagining all days and years that passed that you fled Syria to some UNHCR refugee camp in Turkey just be caught in a limbo of real nothingness.
As most people, naturally, you're going to be fed up dealing the legal system... or lack of a clear legal system, coupled with no economic opportunity to pack up from Turkey and move on to the next great place to go to that isn't a complete shithole... aka Europe.
As we know for sometime, not all European countries, either in the European Union or not, are equal in terms of economic strength. Think for a minute as a Syrian refugee... there's no jobs in Turkey or Lebanon... the Saudis and rest of the Gulf States aren't an attractive resting spot due to how the Gulf States treat non-Arabs. The news of how Greece is nearly bankrupt and has high unemployment doesn't sound like a place to stake down. Non-Schengen zone EU states like Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia also suffer from high unemployment, thus lack of opportunity. Southern EU states like Italy and Spain are in a terrible economic state, so not appealing.
As a refugee, the opportunity lies in Germany, France, United Kingdom, the Nordic States, Canada, or the United States. This is the paradigm of the displaced refugee, of not just the Middle East, but of really any conflict region in the world. People don't just happen to move at some whim, they move because they have to move, whether it be for economic mobility or violent conflict. They move to not just live, but have a chance to rebuild.
When you hear the body count of Paris, it is indeed tragic, 128 people killed at various leisure venues. However, there are thousands of others from Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan escaping turmoil, a general hopelessness and countries that have no chance in hell of economy livability for the foreseeable future die in their journey to seek better pasture, you have to ask yourself... Would I leave too if I had the motivation and opportunity?
The obvious elephant in the room is radicals bent on evil. Yeah, there's plenty of people that are evil, not everyone can be vetted. It is surprising though how a small percentage of people decide the policies of the majority to migrate against such threats. I am not staying we stop trying; however, it is time to not compromise our values in the name of security and safety. Any ideology can be warped to whatever an individual decides to justify the means to the end.
I know full well I've been those discussions of making fun of the Middle East and advocating turning the region into a concrete parking lot and a giant Wal-Mart. Is that really fair to say that to 95% of the population that really just trying to live whatever normal life they wish to have?
I think that many Westerns, most that have no idea of what it is live without a country and having whatever normal life one had ripped away into a seemingly endless conflict, are blatantly ignorant of the situation in the Middle East. At the end of the day, most people in the world want a sense of a predictable and stable life. We know that the Middle East is a bit quirky culturally than what most in the West are use to dealing with, but the region has inched forward since the end of the Cold War.
It is not hard to see the reasons of resentment by any Syrian refugee or any refugee anywhere else has towards the Western world, be it from blatant economic exploitation, supporting non-democratic governments, and general apathy to affected countries legitimate internal issues. The hand of Western world has guided in lengthening instability in already existing unstable regions of the world, whether it be through general apathy as seen with the 1994 Rwandan genocide, to the questionable actions of the West in the current conflict in Syria.
Everyone has resentments on something or someone, both internally and externally. For refugees, one has to be really ignorant to say that, "What do they have to be so angry about that they'll resort to some violence?" Seriously, when you have live uprooted from you from both internal and external actors coupled with inefficient bureaucracy towards refugees, limited economic mobility, limited human rights... something has to give.
If the Western world is the "gold standard" of how to conduct our lives, based on supposedly Judeo-Christian ideals... it's pretty damn hypocritical and judgmental on whom is acceptable and who gets the shit end of the stick. The first step to fixing a problem is not to give people looking for a solution more hurdles, but assist those broken to the point of almost no return.
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