Refugees May Be the Key to Peace in the Middle East

The news in the local paper this morning was about the apparent rise of xenophobic right wing parties in a number of European democracies and the ethically and legally dubious agreement reached between the European Union and Turkey to intern refugees in that country rather than deal with them in Greece or in other EU member sates.

This week, I am also reading a disturbing book by an English Journalist, John Bradley, who makes a cogent argument that not only were radical Islamist parties the clear winners in the so called Arab Spring but that their medium term victory was a forgone conclusion. In his view a once prosperous and tolerant Tunisia is being polarized by radical Islam and that across the region such intolerant religious parties are being helped by a hapless West which does not really understand the issues it is dealing with!

As discussed in an earlier post, I have been deeply concerned by Europe’s response, or lack thereof to the refugee crisis and sincerely believe that if handled properly, the crisis could be turned into an enormous opportunity for Europe to re-balance its lopsided demographics and jump start its economy.

The horrific attacks in Brussels last week has increased the sense of fear in Europe and much has also been written about large groups of immigrants in Cologne and other German cities threatening and molesting women. Such behavior only adds additional fuel to the xenophobic fire. In the United States, the two extremely dangerous individuals who appear to be the favorites for the Republican Presidential nomination actually agree on restricting Muslim immigrants. Donald Trump calls for an outright ban and Senator Ted Cruz calls for allowing governors to ban refugees from Syria specifically. So much for Emma Lazarus’ inspired poem written on the Statue of Liberty asking for the “homeless and tempest tossed”.

A Ray of Hope

One of my daughters sent me a link to the video below which I believe does offer a ray of hope. The video documents the approach of Portugal to resettlement and shows one family which managed to escape the horrors of war and appears to be settling down in Portugal with the help of the European Asylum Support Office. The Office reports on the numbers and status of refugees who have managed to complete the paperwork and are awaiting judgement and resettlement. According to the Office’s 3rd quarter report from 2015 which is available here, it has received a record of almost 460,000 requests in the quarter with about 148,000 coming from Syrians and was facing a backlog of more than 900,000 cases to process. News reports state, however, that only a few hundred of the hundreds of thousands have actually been resettled and the longer we leave these people in precarious situations or in substandard camps, the more difficult it will be to resettle them and help them become constructive citizens of a more pluralistic Europe

While the work of government and civil society could offer hope to the refugees if it could gear up, in my view the refugees themselves offer hope for the current islamic winter that seems to have engulfed the Arab Spring . Perhaps if Europe is able to truly open itself up and help its Moslem citizens integrate, then perhaps these people, or their children will be able to go back to Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, and other countries armed with European values and democratic principles and begin the hard work of transforming those countries into prosperous and open societies such as Tunisa apparently was before its turn for the worst.