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Blowback on a NATO beach - Pepe Escobar
World Refugees
Blowback on a NATO beach
By Pepe Escobar
RT.com
Monday, Sep 7, 2015
A man holds a poster with a drawing depicting drowned Syrian toddlers during a demonstration for refugee rights in Istanbul, Turkey, September 3, 2015. © Osman Orsal
We’ve had it coming. And when it came, virtually the whole planet reacted with stunned silence. Sometimes it takes just a photograph to put a noxiously complex version of hell in perspective.
So to put hell in perspective we must retrace some steps of the arc:
Aylan was also one refugee among millions fleeing “liberation” bombing and the convoluted ramifications/unintended consequences of GWOT – the global war on terror – in the “arc of instability”, from Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Mali.
These refugees are poor but they are also middle-class, like Aylan’s family. Thousands of them die in the Mediterranean, the Mare Nostrum of Roman times now converted into Cemetery Nostrum; 3,500 dead in 2014, over 2,000 since early 2015.
UNHCR detailed fifteen ongoing wars since 2010; eight in Africa (including Libya, Mali, northern Nigeria and South Sudan); three in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq and Yemen); one in Europe (Ukraine – with refugees absorbed by Russia); and three in Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and Pakistan).
The absolute majority of refugees are from Syria. By early 2015, UNHCR was already cataloguing no less than an astounding 11.7 million displaced Syrians – from an initial population of 23 million. The situation that European public opinion now seems to be awakening to is so dramatic that UNHCR automatically recognizes as a “refugee” every single person fleeing Syria.
The “West” also seems to have forgotten, but still 4.1 million refugees are Iraqis; 1.5 million of them are internally displaced.
These refugees are poor but they are also middle-class, like Aylan’s family. Thousands of them die in the Mediterranean, the Mare Nostrum of Roman times now converted into Cemetery Nostrum; 3,500 dead in 2014, over 2,000 since early 2015.
UNHCR detailed fifteen ongoing wars since 2010; eight in Africa (including Libya, Mali, northern Nigeria and South Sudan); three in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq and Yemen); one in Europe (Ukraine – with refugees absorbed by Russia); and three in Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and Pakistan).
The absolute majority of refugees are from Syria. By early 2015, UNHCR was already cataloguing no less than an astounding 11.7 million displaced Syrians – from an initial population of 23 million. The situation that European public opinion now seems to be awakening to is so dramatic that UNHCR automatically recognizes as a “refugee” every single person fleeing Syria.
The “West” also seems to have forgotten, but still 4.1 million refugees are Iraqis; 1.5 million of them are internally displaced.
Full article: http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_71513.shtml