The West is not just Europe, but all the industrial countries, especially those who are prominent members of the United Nations’ Security Council. Their obligation towards the Syrian refugees is not only to accept them in their respective countries and give them a place to live and food to eat, although this is humane and appreciated, but what is needed is more than that — to help bring the devastating war in Syria to a halt.
In the last few weeks the world has seen an influx of refugees, scrambling through the borders of eastern European countries, in an attempt to get to the heart of Europe, especially Germany. They were kicked, hassled and sometimes shot at. Young people, children, the elderly — all have left torn Syria to find a safe haven.
The whole world is watching the unfolding events. Some western politicians have said they will not accept Muslims; the majority of people in the Middle East are Muslim. But others have welcomed the refugees with open arms, and even a rift has arisen between some countries, and some officials have claimed that the refugees are being treated in the same way Nazi Germany treated the Jewish population more than half a century ago.
The missing point that all those countries are refusing to deal with is the root of the problem — the barbaric acts of the Syrian government towards its own population, day and night, week after week. The Syrian forces are bombarding towns and villages in front of the whole world, and nothing has been done, seriously and effectively.
The impact on the millions of Syrian refugees will be seen later on when this young generation that is being scattered all over grows up and finds that nobody stood up to help ease their grievances. Those generations will be savage towards all others, friends or foes. The stress being placed upon the refugees is horrible. Some of them tried and failed to cross the Mediterranean in very small and vulnerable boats, almost on the verge of drowning. Some of them have lost their loved ones to the bottom of the sea. Others have managed to survive, only to find unfriendly receptions. All of these stories that have been told to the world have not crossed the minds of the most imaginative storytellers.
The moral obligation of the West is not only to accept those displaced refugees. It is more than that; it is the willingness to confront the evils — either in Syria or on the international stage such as the Security Council. There, the battle for humanity should be fought.
Paying lip service
Most of the statements coming from Western politicians are lip-service. They talk about the numbers of refugees to be accepted over certain years, but this is frustrating to many observers. What is needed is to treat the issue as an international disaster, and states should not be allowed to commit genocide against their own people.
There are many tools to be used against those people in power in Damascus: the International Court of Justice should be involved, and many other agencies. Those who are responsible for this genocide should be named and shamed, and we have a number of previous international incidents that was stopped and the criminals tried by international authorities.
One need only look at what happened in Kosovo just a few years ago and the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. The Yugoslav President was indicted in May 1999, during the Kosovo War, by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity in Kosovo.In February, France’s Minister of Justice Christina Taubira was quoted as saying that those who are responsible for genocide in Syria will be prosecuted sooner or later, but since then nobody has heard any practical steps to that end. On the contrary there are some reports referring to the rehabilitation of Bashar Al Assad, the Syrian President responsible for those evil acts.
It’s true that the Syrian theatre has a mix of international interests by a number of regional and international powers, but it is equally true that the human price is unprecedented. The contempt that has faced this crisis so far will not be forgotten by the victims. Some voices in the West typically tried to blame Arab countries neighbouring Syria, but they did not grasp the facts; almost three million Syrians are living and working in the six GCC countries, the number in Lebanon and Jordan is almost two million.
It is high time to look into solving this inhumane crisis by removing a very small number of people from power not just because they are not fit to govern, but because they have proved beyond any doubt that they have no sense of what it takes to be human.
Mohammad Al Rumaihi is a professor of political sociology at Kuwait University. You can follow him at twitter.com/@rumaihi42.
