The Refugee Crisis is a Crisis of Imperialism

[polly7]

by T.J. Petrowski / September 12th, 2015

The widely circulated photo of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy whose body was found on a beach in Turkey and whose family was “making a final, desperate attempt to flee to relatives in Canada even though their asylum application had been rejected” by the Stephen Harper Government, has caused widespread outrage and forced Western leaders to acknowledge that there is a “refugee crisis”.

In Canada, the leaders of the Liberal and New Democratic parties have used the news of Kurdi’s tragic death, along with the deaths of his five-year-old brother and his mother, to criticize the Harper Government’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair have called on Canada to accept more Syrian refugees, while the Harper Government, with its lust for military action, insists on more illegal bombing raids in Syria and Iraq as the solution to the surge of Syrian refugees.

The real tragedy is the refusal of Western leaders to acknowledge the cause of the refugee crisis: Western imperialism’s genocidal and never ending wars on the people of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa.

There are now more refugees than at any time since World War 2, and the number of refugees has increased markedly since the start of the Global War on Terror. Wherever the U.S. and its imperialist allies have intervened, whether through direct military action or indirect proxy wars, economic sabotage, and coups, in the name of “democracy”, the “war on terror”, or the “responsibility to protect”, death and despair have been forced upon millions of innocent people who have been left no other choice than to abandon their native lands to embark on a dangerous future of desperate struggle.

More than 2, 500 have died this year trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe, while the International Organization for Migration estimates that 30, 000 could die by the end of 2015.

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/09/the-refugee-crisis-is-a-crisis-of-imperialism/

[malthaussen]

1. I'd be more inclined to support this contention if Saudi Arabia were doing something to help

I find it interesting that, in all the refugee crises that have punctuated the Mideast since 1948, only Jordan -- the country that can least afford it -- ever made any attempt to assimilate the refugees. Given that a significant portion of the death and destruction in the region is due to religious war within Islam, and between the Arab states and Israel, a conflict also tinctured with religion, I hesitate to blame it all on good old imperialism.

-- Mal

[Nitram]

2. Imperialism has been the cause of much misery and many wars, but...

I fail to see how it applies here. The Syrian people rebelled against a despotic Syrian dictator.