‘Military Intervention in the Middle East Started This Crisis in the First Place’
CounterSpin interview with Raed Jarrar on the refugee crisis
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Janine Jackson interviewed Raed Jarrar on coverage of the refugee crisis for the . This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: A recent CNN report said that the worsening Syrian refugee crisis highlights the differences among countries that welcome what they called “desperate migrants” and those that don’t; but if US audiences think that the crisis, some 11 million people now displaced, reflects only on the action or inaction of countries “over there,” they’re misunderstanding the situation. What more do we need to know about this crisis, its roots and possible ways forward? Raed Jarrar is government relations manager at the American Friends Service Committee. He joins us now by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Raed Jarrar.
Raed Jarrar: Thank you for having me again.
JJ: When we spoke to you about this time last year, it was in the context of demands from media talking heads and politicians that the US must “do something” in Syria and Iraq. At that time, it was “do something to wipe out ISIS.” Now we hear again that the US must do something in Syria, but it’s not clear from coverage that we are even really talking about the same place. I don’t want you to oversimplify, but there is a connection, directly, between that “do something” and this “do something,” is there not?
RJ: Definitely. I think that is one of the main issues that’s happening now, the lack of connection between the humanitarian crisis of all of the refugees and displaced people in the Middle East and the US’s own actions in that part of the world. US mainstream media and mainstream politicians have been trying to deal with the humanitarian crisis as if this just happened because of a natural disaster. As if there is a tsunami that has hit the Middle East, and that is why we are having millions of displaced people.
That is not the case. These people who are leaving their homes in Iraq and Syria and Libya and Afghanistan and elsewhere and going to Europe, they are going there because of political and military unrest in their homes. The fact of the matter is that Europe and the United States have played an instrumental role in destroying most of these countries and creating the conditions where people have to leave their countries in the first place.
So while humanitarian assistance is important, and I agree with the calls for Europe and the US to do something—I think that “something” should include some humanitarian assistance and helping refugees—but it also has to include looking at the larger picture and understanding that the actual solution for the refugee crisis is a political solution that would solve the situation back at home and allow for voluntary repatriation.
JJ: We have talked about a kind of amnesia, if you will: We’re always hearing pundits talk about the US should “start” intervening in Syria. Slate had a piece saying that Hillary Clinton was “pushing action in Syria, which Obama ultimately rejected.” The idea is that–it’s explicit: We need to start intervening and stop being on the sidelines. What, in fact, has the US been doing in Syria, for example?
RJ: Our foreign policy engagement is very militarized. There was a really amazing report that came out late last year by the Congressional Research Service, and the report looked into the US spending on wars since 9/11. So it found out that we’ve spent trillions of dollars on wars–surprise, everyone knows that at this stage. But the thing that I found extremely interesting in that report is that 93 percent of the spending went to the Department of Defense, and 7 percent went to the State Department and US AID. And I think that is an actual reflection of the US foreign policy. It is a policy based on militarism and almost exclusively used for military tools.
So now when we deal with the crisis like the one happening in the Middle East, it doesn’t seem like we have other tools in the toolbox other than sending a bomb. We have to bomb someone. There are refugees running away–we have to bomb someone. And it’s such a frustrating, knee-jerk reaction to think about a solution to this crisis by using the same tools that had started the crisis in the first place. Military intervention in the Middle East has started this crisis in the first place.
So definitely, no–no to more intervention in Syria or Iraq. The US has responsibilities because it broke many of these countries, but these responsibilities cannot be fulfilled through military action; they can be fulfilled through political and economic and other sources of engagement in the region that would end the military conflict and put all of these countries on the path of civilization.
JJ: Just to be clear that in Syria, the US has dropped bombs. This idea that Syria has been spared military intervention and perhaps we should try using it is simply false historically.
RJ: Of course; the US has been involved in Syria in so many different ways. There is direct military intervention by dropping bombs, there are even some special operations where US troops have been sent to Syria that we know of now. There is also the indirect intervention by training and equipping different parts of the conflict in Syria and Iraq.
Keep in mind that the conflicts in Syria and Iraq at this stage are linked, and the US is funding and training different parts of this conflict on different sides of the border. So even the US involvement in Iraq at this stage is in a way contributing to the situation in Syria as well.
The US is very, very heavily involved militarily in Iraq and Syria and the rest of the Middle East, and claiming that what’s going on now is happening now because of a lack of US military intervention is laughable. I mean, it’s a joke. We have wasted literally trillions of dollars destroying the Middle East so far, and I think that is the thing that the Middle East needs the least at this stage. People need less bombs, they need less intervention, and I think they need more of political and economic solutions that are on the table. Many people in the region in Iraq and in Syria are discussing ideas for moving forward. The US and other international political forces can play a positive role in creating a space for these local initiatives to start moving forward. So not necessarily participating in them, but at least helping to stop the intervention in these countries.
JJ: I’m going to ask you a little bit more about ways forward in a second; I just want to underscore, in terms of the gap between the media reality and the reality, to the extent that I have just heard recently the idea that the US might be in any way implicated in the situation in Syria, it’s been quoting remarks to that effect from Turkish President Erdogan and from Vladimir Putin. Which, when the US media quote them saying something, is almost a code for saying it’s crazy talk. So that is how marginalized the idea of considering the US role in creating this problem is within the mainstream media.
I want to come back, finally, to talk about going forward, because like it or not, people have been riveted by these images. We all know there are many humanitarian crises going on at the moment, but for whatever reasons, this one has captured people’s attention. So when people are thinking about what they can do, or what they can push their governments to do, what are things that we can suggest as ways forward? You’ve started already to talk about it.
RJ: I think UNHCR have a good framework in dealing with displaced people at large, in general. What we’re seeing in Europe is a drop in the ocean; it’s grabbed media attention, but the entire number of people who went to Europe this year is a few hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants, and that actually adds up to less than 1 percent of the population in Europe. Less than 1 percent, it’s .06 percent of the population of Europe. So it’s not really a human wave that is “taking over Europe.”
Look at what’s going on in Beirut, in Lebanon for example, almost 25 or 30 percent of the population at this stage are refugees. We are talking about numbers that are staggering, 20, 30, 40 percent of the populations of neighboring countries are refugees.
The size of the problem is definitely exaggerated in Europe, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a real problem. And it has an immediate response that starts with humanitarian aid and allowing refugees to resettle to third countries, like what they are doing now in Europe. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The actual solution to the displaced people, as I mentioned earlier, is fixing the root causes that cause their displacement, and that will allow for voluntary repatriation. And between that and the settlement of these countries, UNHCR suggests reaching out to displaced communities where they are now and helping them integrate, so the ones who are in Syria can move to Turkey or Lebanon or displaced inside of Syria or almost to other countries, how can we reach out to them in camps, or in urban areas, to ease their suffering and help them integrate into the communities, have their kids go to school, etc.
Humanitarian aid and allowing some thousands to come to the US and Europe is definitely needed, but that is only the tip of the iceberg, and without dealing with the crisis as a whole, I don’t think we will get to an actual solution.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Raed Jarrar of the American Friends Service Committee. You can find their work online at afsc.org. Thank you very much, Raed Jarrar, for joining us today on CounterSpin.
RJ: Thank you, thanks for having me.
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