The migrant challenge

NO state can stay isolated or afford isolation in this age of globalisation. One recent example of this has been the crisis of the self-styled Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The West tried to avoid it but it has reached its doorsteps.

Afghanistan can be seen as another example of treading the Iraqi path. Though US President Barack Obama has announced some adjustments to his exit plan, it remains to be seen if Afghanistan gets due world attention before the situation gets worse and matters slide to a point where it becomes another Iraq. As far as the European countries are concerned, they have already enough to deal with because of the severe Syrian refugee crisis that has gripped them.

According to the human rights body Amnesty International, only five countries — Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt — host 95pc of the Syrian refugees. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), some 150,000 Syrian refugees have taken asylum in the European Union, largely in Germany.

Tragedies worsen when nations start ‘avoiding’ a crisis because of political and strategic interests.
The Gulf states have also accommodated a large number of the refugees. They, however, claim that the refugees come to their countries with passports and go to the European nations without this travel document. According to official claims, in the Gulf countries, those fleeing Syria get a residential work visa, but the confirmed number of refugees accommodated is as yet not known.

There is no doubt that networks of human smugglers have played a key role in changing the refugees’ direction towards Europe and they are still diverting their movements in the Mediterranean countries, from where they flee in the direction of other states of Europe.

It is interesting that after the crisis erupted in Syria, the rich and upper middle-income groups started migration in different directions including the Mediterranean countries and North America. These countries have seen an opportunity in their displacement as many of the migrants bring with them financial and intellectual capital. The recent waves of migrants belonging to middle-income groups are looking for better economic opportunities and cannot provide immediate benefit to the countries where they seek refuge.

This is a globalised world and the impact of such a crisis cannot be confined to a single state or region. Even Afghanistan and Pakistan are suffering because of the refugee crisis. According to UNHCR web sources, Pakistan is still on top when it comes to hosting the largest refugee population in the world. It has almost 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees. After the crisis in Syria, UNHCR has curtailed funds for their rehabilitation, which will affect the return of the Afghan refugees to their homeland.

Tragedies worsen when nations start ‘avoiding’ a crisis because of their respective political and strategic interests. But their sense of politics can be completely misplaced. As an example consider the situation in Yemen. The international community is ignoring the human tragedy in Yemen, where thousands of people have been killed and millions are living in miserable conditions. Even the tragic images coming from Yemen have failed to draw the international community’s attention towards the war-torn country. This is a looming crisis. If avoided, it will not remain confined to Yemen and will spill over the latter’s boundaries.

Europe has its own economic complexities. But it also sees the influx of the refugees in a broader socio-cultural, religious and political perspective. Though most European nations are welcoming refugees, dissenting voices are not weak in those countries. There is a consensus in the international community that unless the issues in Iraq, Syria and Libya are resolved, the migrant crisis will continue.

However, Nato countries are reluctant to fix these issues through direct military interventions. Their experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have proved to them that removing regimes is not impossible but dealing with post-regime change is very difficult, especially because it involves the rebuilding of post-conflict states from scratch. This is one of the major reasons that they are tolerating Russian strikes against the self-styled Islamic State in Syria.

There are no easy answers to the Middle Eastern conflicts, especially when regional actors and their global allies have divergent strategic and political ambitions. These divergent interests also impact the managing of religious and cultural diversities. In a conflict, societies lose the essence of celebrating their religious and cultural diversities. The options left for the world is to evolve a long-term, economic framework for the resolution of this problem from a religious and cultural perspective.

The international community, especially the West, is trying to evolve an approach that engages states and civil societies, mainly religious communities, for interfaith, inter-sectarian and cultural harmony, to help secure vulnerable religious and cultural minorities living in conflict zones and also persuade migrants from these lands to adopt a more expansive approach.

Recently, an international conference on religious and cultural pluralism and peaceful coexistence in the Middle East was organised by the Greek foreign ministry and attended by political, diplomatic and religious leaders as well as academicians from Europe and the Middle East. The conference reaffirmed that there is a need for enhancing dialogues within and among religions and cultures. The conference also sought to contribute to raising awareness of these pressing issues and enhancing international efforts for the immediate humanitarian relief of these communities.

Such initiatives are indeed ambitious and depend on the active participation of civil society. Certainly, civil society in the Middle East is not strong enough to take up the task. However, it was interesting to note that despite increasing direct and indirect cyber interactions within communities and individuals, a real understanding of each other is still missing, which is the essence of peaceful coexistence. Perhaps that is because of the weak institutions of dialogue in the world.

The writer is a security analyst.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2015

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