Global
Research, Sep 10, 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” [1] by the
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. Trudeau and 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 [2].
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” [3]. 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.
In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan,
Somalia, Mali, Korea, Vietnam, East Timor, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere the
livelihoods of millions have been destroyed by the forces of U.S. and Western
imperialism.
In the 1980s,
Afghanistan had a “genuinely popular government”, according to John Ryan,
retired professor from the University of Winnipeg, that was implementing
widespread reforms [4]. Labour unions were legalized, a minimum wage was
established, hundreds of thousands of Afghans were enrolled in educational
facilities, and women were freed from age-old tribal bondage and able to earn
an independent income. U.S. and Western imperialism, fearful of that kind of
equitable distribution of wealth, supported the feudal landlords and
fundamentalist mullahs to sow chaos across the country, bringing rise to
elements that later formed al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The Afghan people were
once more dealt a severe punishment by the forces of Western imperialism
following 9/11, despite a lack of conclusive evidence linking either the
Taliban or al-Qaeda to the attacks. 30 years of U.S. intervention in
Afghanistan have left the people of Afghanistan impoverished, traumatized, and
desperate.
The conflicts in Libya and Syria are eerily similar to
the Western destabilization of Afghanistan. In 2011, when the Arab Spring
protests swept across the Middle East and North Africa, Western imperialism
hijacked legitimate grievances of the masses as a pretext for intervention in
the name of the “responsibility to protect” and “democracy promotion”.
Prior to the 2011 U.S./NATO intervention, Libya was
among the wealthiest and most stable countries in Africa, with the continent’s
highest standard of living. Housing was enshrined as a human right, education
and healthcare services were free for all citizens, and the country was pushing
to establish an African currency linked to gold to help end the endless cycle
of debt and impoverishment of the African masses by Western imperialism [5].
Under the cloak of the United Nations, Western imperialism, using the pretext
of protecting the people of Libya from Gaddafi’s murderous rule, launched
airstrikes on Libya and allied themselves with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
and other Libyan extremists [6]. NATO airstrikes killed hundreds of civilians
and forced Libya back into the Stone Age; Gaddafi was mercilessly tortured and
murdered by the rebels. Thousands have been killed as rival tribal and
extremist factions, some now allied with ISIS, battling for control of the
country.
The conflict in Syria has frequently been referred to
as “Libya 2.0”. U.S. imperialism with the support of Israel, Turkey, and the
Persian Gulf States, trained and financed “moderate” rebels to overthrow the
secular and popularly supported government of Bashar al-Assad. The “Free Syrian
Army”, i.e., the “moderate” rebels, has been virtually eliminated in the
conflict despite millions of dollars in aid from the U.S. and its regional
allies [7]. FSA fighters have deserted to the ranks of ISIS en masse, itself a
product of the illegal U.S. occupation of Iraq that killed 1 million Iraqis.
There is overwhelming evidence that the U.S. and its allies have been actively training
and supporting ISIS elements since the start of the proxy war in Syria [8][9].
It wasn’t until ISIS invaded Iraq with its new Toyota technicals, curtesy of
U.S. imperialism, that ISIS was declared a threat to the world. Western
imperialism changed its tactic from supporting ISIS to airstrikes on Iraq and
Syria, with the support of other Western imperialist states, Turkey (which is
also conveniently bombing anti-ISIS Kurdish fighters [10]), Saudi Arabia and
the Persian Gulf States, but without consultation with the Syrian government,
Iran, or Hezbollah that have been fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda elements since the
start of the conflict. Hundreds of thousands have died in the West’s proxy war
against the Syrian government.
From Libya to Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Pakistan and Somalia, U.S. and Western imperialist interventions,
coups, and sanctions have displaced and killed millions of people. Physicians
for Social Responsibility estimates that in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan alone
Western imperialist interventions have caused the deaths of 1.3 million people
[11]. It is no wonder then that hundreds of thousands seek asylum elsewhere;
however, after traveling huge distances overland and on water, refugees find
themselves abused, discriminated against, held in detention, or rejected from
Europe, Canada, the U.S., and Australia.
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 [12].
Refugees attempting to enter Europe, even if they are
granted asylum in a mainland European country such as Germany, have been met
with police violence in Greece, Italy, and other countries on the Mediterranean
that are the first landing points for boats sailing from North Africa and
Turkey.
Greek riot police have beaten refugees protesting the
failure of local governments to process their applications. Conditions are so
poor for refugees that while waiting for processing newborn babies have died in
Greece [13].
On the Macedonia-Greece border, where more than a
thousand refugees are crossing daily, refugees that broke through the barbed
wire fences were shot at with stun grenades, and the Macedonian police have
treated refugees as rioters, according to Amnesty International [14].
Italian police forcibly removed African refugees
camping out at the French border after France refused to grant them asylum
[15]. Hungary is building a fortified wall, similar to the barbaric wall that
divides the U.S.-Mexico border, to stop refugees from crossing the border [16].
The thousands of refugees that seek asylum in
Australia are detained in Australia’s detention facilities in Papua New Guinea
and the small island nation of Nauru, dubbed the “Guantanamo Bay of the
Pacific” [17]. Refugees can be detained for several years in these facilities,
where social workers have observed “profound damage” to those detained through
“prolonged deprivation of freedom, abuse of power, confinement in an
extremely harsh environment, uncertainty of future, disempowerment, loss of
privacy and autonomy and inadequate health and protection services” [18]. An
Australian Senate investigation received reports of guards raping women on tape
and sexually exploiting children as young as 2-years-old [19]. Just as Britain
refuses to assist drowning refugees in the Mediterranean out of fear that it
will encourage more migrants to seek asylum [20], the unannounced policy of
Australian authorities is to make refugees suffer abuse and inhumane living
conditions to deter them from seeking asylum in Australia, as if Australian
imperialism hasn’t inflicted enough suffering on the people of the Middle East,
South and Southeast Asia.
U.S. and Western imperialism is the root cause of the
“refugee crisis”. Everyday men, women, and children are killed by U.S. drone
strikes in Pakistan, U.S. and Western-backed militias in Afghanistan, Syria,
and Somalia, European and North American mining and oil conglomerates in
Central and Western Africa, or are starved to death in Yemen by the U.S.-backed
Arab blockade of the country. Until the genocidal aims of U.S. imperialism,
with the support of Canada, Australia, the European Union, and regional allies,
are defeated, the “War on Terror” will continue to make life too unbearable for
working people in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East to remain in their home
countries.
Notes
4.
Parenti, Michael. “The Terrorism Trap”. Page 56. City Lights
Books, San Fransisco, 2002.
14. http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/08/22/war-refugees-trapped-under-fire-trying-enter-macedonia
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