Category Archives: Foreign Affairs

Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Syria, United Nations

Syrian refugees in need of much better support…

Intro: With Syria’s troubled neighbours being forced to cope with unprecedented levels of refugees crossing their borders, the time has come for the West to do more

The sheer scale and numbers of people fleeing Syria’s civil war is an exodus that requires repeating.

Estimates of refugee movements vary, perhaps for obvious reasons, but many more than two million people have left the country since the conflict began.

Many in the West often assume that it is our countries that routinely absorb the largest numbers of refugees, but a glimpse of the facts reveals a far different reality. Undoubtedly, it is Syria’s closet neighbours that have borne the greatest burden – countries that, politically, already have enough problems to deal with.

Consider Lebanon, for example. It has taken more than 800,000 refugees displaced as a result of the civil war, a figure that is almost a fifth of its entire population. In relative terms, that’s the equivalent of the UK experiencing 12 million starving and impoverished people – men, women and children – flowing across its borders. Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq (including the autonomous Kurdish region in the north) have taken substantial numbers, too. To date, the most generous destination for Syrian expatriates has been Sweden, with more than 15,000 given safe haven.

The UN’s plea that the West accommodates an additional 30,000 has to be seen in the context of this vast and escalating humanitarian catastrophe. Anyone who has read the first-hand accounts, or seen media pictures of these desperately beleaguered people seeking to find shelter, and the basic necessities of life, will come to understand the scale of the tragedy that has affected so many families and individuals.

Estimated refugee movements in Syria.

Estimated refugee movements in Syria.

Aid agencies and charities working in the field have written to the British Government asking that the UK accept a proportion of the refugees. The plea clearly has a moral underpinning that is overwhelming. Though families in the UK may well be feeling the effects of austerity, most would find the suffering that many of these innocent civilians have undergone difficult to comprehend. Taking in our fair share would only amount to a small proportion of the total. More important, however, has to be the provision of fuel, food, water, shelter and sanitation to those tens of thousands struggling to survive in camps across the near east.

As we have come to realise there are many arguments, both for and against, about international aid. In the recent past, for example, there has been the issue over the Indian space programme and the substantial amount of British taxpayers’ money that goes towards it. Resisting that has been the vocal minority of Conservative MPs who would like to see aid given to that project drastically cut. Yet, both the Prime Minister and Chancellor have resolutely stood firm against the instincts of those on the Tory backbenches.

But we have an opportunity now for them to once again to show moral leadership by impressing on the country and international community. By demonstrating magnanimity of outlook and common humanity, the British Government should be forthcoming and welcome a fair quota of Syrian refugees who are in desperate need of help and assistance. It should also consider allocating more funds for the requisitioning of necessities for the refugee camps, as part of a co-ordinated international effort.

As peace talks over Syria will be held this week in Geneva, the Western partners at these talks should surely be able to collaborate and agree on such a plan of action. It is unlikely the war being waged by Bashar al-Assad on his own people will end anytime soon.

Like the conflict that prevailed in Lebanon, the bloodshed in Syria could drag on for many more years. The desperate plight of many Syrians needs to be supported for as long as it takes.

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Foreign Affairs, Government, Lebanon, Middle East, Politics, Syria

The assassination of Mohamad Chatah: Lebanon’s moderate voice has been silenced…

QUAGMIRE OF SYRIA

Mohamad Chatah, the former Finance Minister in the Lebanese government of Saad Hariri, was assassinated yesterday in a huge car bomb blast in Beirut. Lebanon has lost a courageous intellectual and a fervent interlocutor for moderation who has regularly spelled out the extreme peril his nation faces as the civil war in Syria continues to polarise the Lebanese people.

Mr Chatah was a prominent blogger and user of social networking sites. Just hours before his death, he used Twitter to express his grave premonition that Lebanon was heading back towards the abyss. He tweeted: ‘Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security and foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 years.’

As a leading Sunni, Mr Chatah had followed the hard anti-Assad line being pursued by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It should not have been difficult, even if not agreeing with everything he positioned himself on, to recognise that he saw clearly the dire peril his nation was facing. Mr Chatah’s analysis was that the war in Syria, which has already claimed 120,000 lives, has gone on too long for the regime of Bashar al-Assad to be restored to its previous dominant position. Because of this, the preferred outcome for both Iran and Hezbollah, he said, was for the war to continue indefinitely.

Mr Chatah’s vision was of clarity and pragmatism. He also saw for Lebanon the implications of how great a disaster such a stalemate would be for his country, suggesting it could not hope to avoid being dragged in. As a consequence, he believed, along with other patriots, was that Lebanon would suffer another bout of destructive civil war, similar to the one that lasted from 1975 to 1990. His violent assassination is undoubtedly another fatal step in that direction.

Following months of frustration and numerous setbacks, a peace conference on Syria is set to open in the Swiss town of Montreux next month. Hopes for success at the talks may be slim as the intensification of the war continues. Whilst both sides are seeking to maximise their positions in advance of the summit, the outside world must owe it to Mr Chatah and his beleaguered people to do far more in bringing Syria’s civil war to an end.

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Foreign Affairs, Government, Iran, Lebanon, Middle East, Syria, United States

The conflict in Syria spills over into Beirut…

Intro: The urgency of getting all sides to the conflict around the negotiating table

The double bomb attack on the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon’s capital city of Beirut marks a horrifying and sinister escalation of the Syrian conflict. Not since 1999 has a suicide bomber struck a non-military target in Lebanon. This is also the first time that the Iranian Embassy has been attacked, although Shia civilians in southern Beirut have been regularly targeted. The Al-Qaeda affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades claim to be behind the atrocity and, if true, the explosions bring an apocalypse in the region that much closer – that fearful day when Lebanon is fully swallowed up in the Syrian civil war.

Since the first uprisings against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad in the spring of 2011, many tens of thousands of people have died. But the war itself, and the subsequent refugee crisis it has caused, with millions of people displaced, reaps less attention from the outside world as time goes on.

Diplomatically, many will be expressing a sigh of relief that the West decided against taking military action over Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Evidently, the risk of how the West almost became embroiled in yet another Middle Eastern quandary is clearer to see now and was simply too high. Today, the United States is involved in delicate political and diplomatic negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programmes which may even produce a preliminary deal as early as this week. While much emphasis is being placed on a deal, not even this should distract global attention from the urgency of stopping the Syrian war.

The timing of the attack may be related to the fact that Assad’s forces are gaining ground, with the capture in recent days of a strategic village and the fall of a key rebel commander. The Beirut bombs are a clear and stark reminder that the Sunni rebellion can still strike back with relative impunity. That aside, and with the US so heavily involved diplomatically elsewhere, the risk now is that Assad and his supporters will believe they can win the war by military means. That, though, is not a view that can be allowed to prevail. Assad and his regime has committed too many crimes for the world to sit back and allow the violent anarchy to continue, mayhem which is steadily erupting inside Lebanon and Turkey as time goes on.

The urgency of getting all sides to the conflict around the negotiating table to thrash out a peace deal must now be a priority in light of the Beirut bombs.

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