The Syrian Refugee Crisis — a case study in a mismanaged humanitarian disaster

What makes me feel that the refugee crisis is a disaster is multi-fold. When I watch the news on television and youtube I see stranded and hopeless people risking their lives to take inflatable boats to Europe in search of a better life — or at least a chance at survival. Many of these refugees face drowning, deportation, imprisonment, or being scammed by human traffickers. There are several things that bother me here.

1. How is it that not one country in the world will offer these refugees a safe boat to get them to wherever they are going? We have plenty of money to start unnecessary wars, but when someone desperately needs help, the entire world leaves them stranded.

2. The refugees often do not have passports as their identification documents were often stolen by ISIS. In Europe, their identity will not be definite, and the refugees could be dangerous to their host countries and pose a very dangerous security risk.

3. ISIS engages in regular recruitment in various parts of Europe. More Muslims in Europe means more recruitment and more dangerous incidents like Charlie Hebdo, etc.

4. Europe has neither the resources or the skill to deal with such an influx of refugees. Additionally, the culture and religious clash will cause long-term problems in Europe. Many European countries are already having serious clashes between Christians & Muslims, Jews & Muslims, not to mention between Kurds and Arabs among other more “internal” problems that got transplanted into Europe.

5. Turkey allows refugees to stay in their country but doesn’t allow them to work. How can someone survive without work? The same situation happened to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The inhumanity is just staggering.

6. Since Iran and Syria are “Allies,” how come none of the refugees want to set foot in Iran?

7. Why don’t South Korea and China take in a few million refugees. China already has 1.3 billion. What’s a few more million? They won’t even feel the difference. It is baffling that all of the migrants want to go to the same two destinations in Europe, but none even think about China.

8. It is interesting that Saudi Arabia has not taken in any refugees. Arabia has a long history with Syrian workers, and a few decades ago decided to invite Pakistanis and Filipino workers instead since they are less aggressive. In the old days when Lebanese and Syrians were the main workforce in Arabia, there were too many problems with unruly behavior, and perhaps Arabia doesn’t want to repeat its mistakes!

What if the world was prepared?
What if there was a system in place where thousands of dwellings could be put up in days? What if all of the big countries would coordinate resources for transporting refugees ahead of time so when a crisis hit everyone would be ready? What if the next time there was a war, huge container ships would be waiting around the corner to take refugees to safe harbors? Yes, this is all possible, and not even that expensive. It takes something that I like to call planning.

Walking to Europe seems insane!
It seems illogical to have people walking from the Middle East to Northern Europe only to find a door slammed in their face. What makes more sense to me is to have safe spots in the Middle East, perhaps in Turkey, Syria, or Jordan which are protected by large militaries — where people can work and be housed properly. I saw that in Germany they created a beautiful neighborhood out of shipping containers. Windows and doors were drilled into these containers. A family could comfortably live in two containers merged together. Such housing is comfy and cost effective too. Imagine if several million units could be constructed somewhere in a special economic zone in Turkey and then manufacturers set up shop there too. Nobody will invest without military protection, but Turkey is a militarily strong country and they seem to me to be the best suited.

India is not even on the map in this crisis
I will also note that India is the most talented country at taking care of millions of homeless people. There are countless slums in India where mass amounts of people live. India seems to be able to get enough resources to these slums so that people can survive. How a clumsy country like India manages better than the West at catering to the very poor baffles me, but they have a lot more experience since there are so many poor there. India’s poor do not live in what I could call “comfort,” but they survive which is something that Syrian and Afghani refugees cannot take for granted. I will also note that India doesn’t enforce labor laws, and the Syrians would easily be able to work and in five years gain citizenship in India. India has always had immigrants from ancient times. Persians have been coming to India for 20,000 years with the Parsis being one of the later migrations. Bengladeshis cross the border daily. They are almost impossible to tell from the local Bengalis, and the government doesn’t seem to care.

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