The last refuge of the hapless

Aylan Kurdi washed ashore, a wake up call

Raju Korti
It took the death of a three-year-old toddler Aylan Kurdi to shake the collective conscience of the world. The boy with Kurdish ethnic background drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in the thick of the Syrian refugee crisis. It has rightly triggered a debate on how humanity should deal with a crisis of plenty unleashed by wars and ethnic strife.
The situation across Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey is no different with people crossing borders and travelling many kilometers within their own country to find respite from war. As things go, the magnitude of the problem is now truly global as thousands have crossed continents and have ended up in Europe seeking the same respite. By and large it's taken Europe by surprise. Opinions vary on how to deal with the crisis. Some say Europe and the US should step up. Others say the rich Gulf states should use their enormous wealth to help. But international diplomacy and politics are not necessarily guided by compunctions or human conscience.
The trouble is the word "refugee crisis" can be understood in many convenient ways but one can comprehend its true magnitude and seriousness only when one sees the pictures of the Aylan Kurdi kind. Frenzied families swarming a Hungarian train station, their children sleeping on floors and sidewalks, fearing Hungary will intern them in sinister-sounding "camps," Greek tourism towns filling with tents and with humanitarian workers, to accommodate the rickety boats of refugees that arrive daily at the shores have made for disturbing pictures in the Western Media.
If statistics are to be believed, more than 19 million people have been forced to flee their home countries because of war, persecution, and oppression, and everyday an estimated 40,000 plus more join them. Majority of these head for Europe, which is why the crisis there appears most severe.
It appears that there are a couple of laminations to this aggravating situation. The first is more obvious: Overlapping web of wars and crises that has forced millions of people from their homes in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere. By default and perforce, it has bridged their gap  with Europe. And the European nations are at their wit's ends on how the crisis should be looked at.
In the second, there is something more than meets the eye. Western countries with all their wealth, are averse to take a sympathetic view of the situation. In fact, there is a growing anti-refugee politics as peoples of these countries feel insecure over the effects of immigration. So despite well equipped to handle such a crisis, these nations remain preoccupied with vague but long-held ideas about national identity, are driving nativist, populist politics, and thus policies that contribute to the crisis. The biggest driver of the crisis is Syria. Reports say nearly a fifth of Syria's population has fled the country since the war began in 2011. The Bashar al-Assad's regime there has targeted civilians ruthlessly, including with chemical weapons and barrel bombs while the ISIS has subjected Syrians to murder, torture, crucifixion, sexual slavery, and other appalling atrocities. Although majority Syrian refugees have ended up in shoddy camps in neighboring countries, there seems to be a growing realization that they may never get to return to their homeland. That has forced them on a hazardous and unsafe journey to flee to Europe. Syria is not the only one. The crisis in Somalia and Afghanistan is similar though not as acute. Political, sectarian oppression and economic migration have forced the hands of people in a dire situation fraught with deathly consequences.
The Arab Spring was perhaps the biggest spark of the global refugee crisis. The turmoil against Col Gaddafi saw the country erupt into chaos. But refugees and economic migrants didn't hesitate to use the African country as a conduit for cross-Mediterranean journey to Europe. It had a cascading effect as only expected. It led to war in Syria, conflict in Yemen, and eventually, to the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Within Europe, countries like Hungary and Austria have introduced stiff checks to deter the refugees.
As the crisis threatens to spill out of control, it appears the European Union (EU) is either unable or reluctant to deal with it though it must be conceded that there are some technical issues that tie the EU's hands. So far, the only countries to take a moral high ground are Germany, Belgium and Denmark by allowing asylum to the refugees. It conclusively proves that it is not the money factor but the anti-immigration policies that the western countries are more bothered about. With the exception of Germany, each country is trying to push the burden on somebody else, which means nobody is actually trying to handle the crisis, which means the crisis is getting worse all the time.
Circa 1971 during the liberation of Bangladesh when lakhs of refugees spilled over to India to escape the tyranny let loose by Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and India true to its policy of Atithi Devo Bhava (guest is God), accommodated them all in a humanitarian gesture.
So is the refugee crisis a humanitarian one or one that concerns national security? Each country may look at it from its own vantage point but the bottom line remains that it is the last refuge of the hapless.