NATO, Syrian Refugees, Warships

Date: 13 February 2016 - 21:53

News ID: ۲۳۸۲۲

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

NATO plans to send warships to the Aegean Sea to intercept refugees trying to reach Europe and force them instead to land in Turkey.

The EU has repeatedly demanded that Turkey both allow refugees into their country from Syria, and ensure that none of the refugees are able to get further north into European Union member nations like Greece. Turkey has threatened to open the floodgates of refugees if the EU doesn’t offer them more help managing them.

It’s surprising that NATO was able to so quickly get behind this plan, particularly since Turkey is a member, and has been objecting to European efforts to make the entire refugee crisis their problem. However, this deployment will center on refugees from Syria, but is likely to lead to pushes for more deployments across the Mediterranean to keep other refugees from trying to make the trip by sea to Italy and other southern European nations.

Meaning, the European Union’s official response to the boatloads of refugees continues to be anything but inadequate and shameful. The appalling policy is driven by the same warped logic: Satisfying the baseless fear of the ‘other’.

- The global poor did not come about by accident. It is the result of centuries of colonization, imperialism and the current corruption that has allowed a handful of regimes and people to steal natural resources and pilfer public goods.

- In more recent times, these inequalities have been reinforced by a global trade system that operates according to the golden rule – that those who have the gold make the rules. Europe is rich because other nations are poor.

- A large number of refugees and migrants are displaced by wars. The top three nations from which maritime refugees to the EU come are Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. In other words, many are running for their lives through countries the West has bombed and destroyed.

Put bluntly, European governments must, at the very least, acknowledge how much of this misery they are responsible for. Amid talk of sending warships to stem migrant flows, therefore, European governments should stop passing off responsibility for refugees to neighbours. They must stop making jingoistic overtures toward attacking the trafficking industry, seeking to "identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers.”

The fact that they seem more enthusiastic about deploying gunships than stopping wars and extending asylum underscores the colonial nature of this crisis: European governments respond with violent tactics when international cooperation for peace, humanitarian assistance and social justice are what’s actually needed in war-torn countries.

The human tragedy in the Mediterranean is indeed immense and disgraceful. It is worsened by Europe's refusal to learn from its past mistakes. The great humanitarian ideas that once inspired the European Union seem to have lost their attraction.