Refugee Crisis Culprits Escape Justice Again

The United States and its regional allies are driving the war and conflict behind the ongoing displacement in the Middle East and North Africa. The despicable part is that they are not being held to account.

Little wonder the failure of the United States, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Jordan to address the rising humanitarian crisis is being met with global outrage and condemnation.

The solitary with Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi – found dead on a Turkish beach – disturbed the world and became the symbol of refugee tragedy unfolding on the shores of Europe. Equally shocking was the news that prior to his visit with President Barack Obama, the delegation of Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz bought out the entire Four Seasons in Georgetown, one of Washington’s costliest hotels!

Never admitting their fault in the first place, Salman’s regime, along with Qatar, Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, has offered no resettlement places to Syrian refugees. Still, they had the nerves to show off their extravaganza during the three-day tour of Washington – where key responsibility for the refugee crisis lies.

Equally shocking is the news that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced the start of construction of a fence along the border after international calls for Tel Aviv to take in Syrian refugees. Netanyahu has said he would not allow Israel to be “submerged” by a wave of refugees. This is while just like Washington, Israel’s war policies lie at the root of the ongoing displacement.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to realize that Iraqis, Syrians and Libyans are not running away from their homes because of their governments. They are running away from the destructive consequences of the actions caused by the United States and its allies.

This is a man-made crisis and the Europeans share a good deal of blame as well. The “Assad must go” gang continues to “intervene” in the Syrian war in measurable and significant ways – most notably by arming, funding and training “trusted” terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and proxies.

According to Washington Post, the CIA has trained and equipped nearly 10,000 fighters sent into Syria over the past several years – meaning that the agency is spending roughly $100,000 per year for every terrorist who has gone through the program.

In addition to this, the Obama administration has engaged in sanctions against the Assad government, provided air support for those looking to depose him, “incidentally” funneled arms to ISIL, and not incidentally aligned the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army with Al-Qaeda.

There is no doubt many of the refugees are escaping the neocon foreign policy of regime change, invasion, and pushing “democracy” at the barrel of a gun. The boy in question, Aylan Kurdi, was escaping tens of thousands of radical, medieval Wahabbists, freedom fighter cartoons, and US-Turkish bombing of his hometown of Kobani – far from anything in Damascus. And as we know there was no ISIL in either Iraq or Syria before the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

Under the circumstances, the ultimate solution lies in creating the conditions that will allow refugees to return home. Funding, arming and fueling the crisis is not what the people of Syria want. As maintained by the Somali poet Warsan Shire: No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.