Flooding Greeks Isles and European continent, more that 4 million Syrian refugees fled harm’s way in Syria’s four-year-old civil war designed to topple the Alawite Shiite regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Sprung from the 2011 Arab Spring that challenged dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, it didn’t take long for reveal radical Islam’s divine plan of establishing a new caliphate declared June 30, 2014 by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria leader Abu Musab al-Baghdadi, seizing some 30% of Iraq and Syria. While al-Baghadi pretends his outlaw ISIS organization represents all Muslims, he’s backed militarily by Saddam Hussein’s former Revolutionary Guards seeking to avenge the March 20, 2013 Gulf War. ISIS seized the power vacuum created when former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki essentially booted out U.S. troops December 15, 2011.
Former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush’s brother Jeb, now running for president, blame President Barack Obama for the rise of ISIS, when Bush-43 signed the withdrawal agreement with al-Maliki in 2008 before Obama took his oath-of-office Jan. 20, 2009.. Bush, Cheney and Jeb want to rewrite history but the catastrophic mistake to topple Saddam April 10, 2003 opened the floodgates to Islamic terrorism in Iraq, spreading over the Middle East. With Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fending for his life, over 4-million refugees now flee the region for safer ground in Mideast, North Africa and Europe. ISIS and Ayman al-Zawahr’s al-Qaeda lead the charge to topple al-Assad, sending the region spiraling into more anarchy. No one currently in the U.N. Security Council have any consensus about how to end Syria’s civil war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced yesterday that Russia would send troops and military equipment to beat back the ISIS and Sunni insurgency. Obama has no coherent Syrian strategy for ending the civil war that’s wreaking havoc from the Greek islands and Europe. Now that the P5+1 has completed the Iranian nuke deal, it’s time to turn attention to finding a fix in Syria. Only collective international action can stop the humanitarian crisis that threatens the European and global economy. Estimating that 330,000 people have lost their lives since March 2011 and more that 7.6 million more displaced from Syria, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights warns that over 12.2 million need humanitarian aid. U.N. officials have their hands tied managing the crisis unless the Security Council can come up with an acceptable plan.
U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] Antonio Guterres called the crisis the worst since WWII. “This worst humanitarian crisis of our era should be galvanizing a global outcry of support, but instead help is dwindling,” said Guterres, taking the worm’s eye view. To stop the need for humanitarian relief, a crisis in itself, the Security Council mist meet to urgently find a fix to the problem. As Putin has figured out, toppling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad would only add to the region’s chaos. Whatever misgivings the U.S. or European Union have with Moscow’s March 1, 2014 annexation of Crimea or military support to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s Donbass region, something must be done in Syria before it upends Europe and the global economy. U.S. and U.N. officials should listen with an open mind to Russian proposals to end Syria’s civil war.
No matter how well or ill-intentioned EU countries toward Syria’s immigration crisis, driving millions of indigenous people to flee the war zone isn’t sustainable. No U.N. or non-governmental organization can take on the burden without stretching existing resources to the breaking point. Security Council officials must listen carefully to Russian military proposals to finally end Syria’s insurgency. It’s premature and unrealistic for the U.S. to take any position on al-Assad, whose government is the U.N. sovereign entity in Syria. Once the civil war ends, it’s possible for the Security Council to deal with al-Assad’s regime. Stopping the hemorrhage must be the U.N.’s top priority. Watching hundreds-of-thousands of immigrants, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban questioned whether some of the political refugees were actually migrants looking for work and better way of life.
Opening up more quotas for Syrian immigrants doesn’t fix the problems of ending Syria’s insurgency or the Mideast’s failed states that lack the industry to sustain enough employment for their people. “If they want to continue on from Hungary,” said Orban, “it’s not because they’re in danger, it’s because they wan something else,” questioning what’s driving the immigration. “I am happy that Germany has become a country that so many people out of Germany now associate with hope,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, urging her EU counterparts to open more doors to refugees. No matter how much Germany wants to help, Merkel knows she has her limits. Stopping the hemorrhage from Syria requires the U.S. and the Security Council to get on the same page when it comes to defeating the insurgency. Putting aside differences with Putin over Ukraine would be a positive first step.
