Thursday, April 3, 2014
Syria and Ukraine -Two Crises with the Same Past and Possibly the Same Future
The number of Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon has officially been set by the United Nations at 1 million today, highlighting the growing humanitarian catastrophe caused by Syria's civil war and the huge burden placed on its smaller unprepared neighbors. The UN refugee agency UNHCR marked what it called a devastating milestone by formally registering a 18-year-old student from the central Syrian city of Homs as the millionth refugee at a ceremony in Lebanon's Mediterranean city of Tripoli. Three years of vicious civil war against President Bashar al-Assad's autocratic rule has caused one of the greatest upheavals seen in the Middle East - and one which will continue as long as the Syrian conflict goes on. With a population of just 4 million, Lebanon now has the highest per capita concentration of refugees worldwide, with refugees making up 25% of its population. For example, there are more school-aged refugees than Lebanese children in the country's state schools, the UN says, and 2,500 new refugees are registered every day. "The extent of the human tragedy is not just the recitation of numbers," UNHCR representative Ninette Kelley told reporters in Tripoli. "Each one of these numbers represents a human life who...have lost their homes, their family members, their sense of future." UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres issued a statement saying : "The influx of a million refugees would be massive in any country. For Lebanon, a small nation beset by internal difficulties, the impact is staggering," Alongside the wave of Syrian refugees have come outbreaks of violence in Lebanon, where sectarian divisions reflect those of its larger neighbor, Syria. There are also bombings and rocket attacks from the Lebanese capital Beirut to the Bekaa Valley and deadly street fights in Tripoli between Sunni Muslims, who mainly support Syria's rebels, and Alawites, who back Assad. The bloodshed has destabilized Lebanon and led to a sharp fall in economic growth at the same time that the refugees have put a strain on services such as power, water, education and health facilities. The World Bank says Lebanon's small economy is losing $900 million a year as a direct result of the crisis. Syrian refugees have also fled to Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt, and the official total of 2.6 million refugees, although less than the real exodus number, means Syrians will soon overtake Afghans as the world's biggest refugee population. To these refugees must be added the additional millions displaced inside Syria. The UN's regional refugee appeal for $1.7 billion in 2014 is only 14-percent funded, forcing UNHCR and other aid agencies to focus help on only the most pressing cases. A Syrian woman, a refugee with her seriously ill husband and four teenage children, set herself afire this week in Lebanon in protest at the lack of food being provided by supply-strapped humanitarian agencies. She has burns over 70% of her body and may not survive. ~~~~~ Dear readers, we must not become hardened to the images or discount the pain being felt all over the Middle East because of the Syrian civil war. It is a challenge to continue to face the daily horrors, but we must press our governments to stop the war now. It was certainly caused by Bashar al-Assad's unprecedented attack on peaceful protesters three years ago - but its continuance can be laid at the doorsteps of Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin - Obama for his refusal to provide the muscular leadership that would have stopped al-Assad, and Putin for encouraging al-Assad and refusing to help the UN Security Council clamp down on him. And, while it may seem a world away and unconnected, we are now witnessing the beginning of a similar combination of Obama's weakness and Putin's determination unfold in Ukraine. Russian and Crimean Gazprom announced on Tuesday that Ukraine will now have to pay $385.5 per 1,000 cubic metres of gas in the second quarter, an increase from the $268.5 agreed in December, and $100 higher than the average price for clients n the European Union. Kiev had expected the decision, which had been clearly flagged by President Vladimir Putin, who suggested earlier that there would be an end to a discount that had been agreed in December, before the crisis over the ouster of Ukraine's Moscow-backed president and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Crimea Gazprom's Chief Executive Officer, Alexei Miller, said an increase was justified because Ukraine's debt for unpaid gas bills now stands at $1.7 billion, although Russia estimates the debt at $3.2 billion. "The December discount for gas cannot be applied any more," Miller said, adding that the transportation tariff for Gazprom's gas to Europe via Ukraine was increasing by 10%, in line with earlier agreements. Add to this 40% increase in the cost of gas to Ukraine households the fact that the IMF has, with foolishly dangerous economic decision-making, told Ukraine that it must end subsidies to Ukrainians to help them with their high gas bills. Ukraine says the EU must provide it with gas to make up its lack while it argues with Russia over supplies and their cost. But, the EU gets roughly half its gas from Russia. Are we looking at the use of gas prices to start an internal fight in Ukraine between pro-Russia and pro-EU factions? At the likelihood of a mass exodus of Ukrainian refugees into the EU? Will Obama continue to talk up the EU's responsibility to help Ukraine while doing nothing to provide CNG or other energy supplies to either the EU or Ukraine? Will Putin, as he did in Syria, pursue his Soviet-style agenda at the expense of European stability - and so create another Middle East in the heart of Europe? These are deeply troubling questions that must not be disregarded as unlikely. Moldova, Poland, the Baltic states - any and all could become Europe's Lebanon. Only one person can stop these catastrophic scenarios and he is hiding behind his massively wrong-headed "foreign policy" of "leading from behind." Behind what, Mr. Obama? After Europe, America and Great Britain would be all that is left of the West. A nightmare scenario for anyone who remembers World War II.
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A million refugees is alarming. BUT consider that a recent report ESTIMATED (and we all know that such an estimate if far wrong) that 150,000 Syrians have been killed in this Civil War.
ReplyDeleteHow wrong this 150,000 number may be take into consideration that text books are still today quoting the number 6,000,000 being killed by Hitler via concentration camps brutality! When the factual number of Hitler's murderous exploits on civilians of varying ethnicity is near 13,000,000.
So these estimates are always wrong.
I had an Economics professor tell the class ... "that all things inside life (and therefore economics) live in rotations and the rotations are nearly always progressively deteriorating.” He also said that financial complications left unattended to ruins, the individual, the family, the community, the state, the nation, etc.
ReplyDeleteSo what will the outcome of Syria & the Ukraine if left unattended what impact will they have on the Middle East and EU. And at what point will the unattended problem simply overflow the spillway and drown us all?
But what if this is a plan of the Progressive Socialists/ Administrative State advocates and all this turmoil between certain leaders of various countries is nothing more than masquerading mayhem with the end result being the collapse of the “democratic states”?
DeleteSound like a conspiratorial plot that belongs in a movie. But remember how George Soros (Obama’s chief council & financier) maneuvers!
The fall of the Assad regime means one less Shiite government in the region, a region already dominated by Sunni governments, with Iran and Iraq, the majority Shiite nations, becoming increasingly isolated and threatened, and the Sunni governments becoming increasingly emboldened. Sectarian strife is at the heart of conflict in this region, the lesson we should have learned in Iraq, and a lesson we forget at our peril. Indeed, the lesson of Iraq is that sectarian identity trumps all else including national identity. Assad cannot win the Syrian civil war, not with Shiites (Alawites) comprising less than 15% of the Syrian population and with his Republican Guard (Alawite) troops suffering an increasing number of casualties. No, Assad cannot avoid the inevitable, Russia cannot avoid the inevitable. The greater challenge will come, ironically, when the Sunnis prevail in Syria. When that day comes will it embolden the Sunni nations? Will Iran launch a pre-emptive attack against the Sunni nations? How will Pakistan and Israel, the two nations with nuclear weapons, respond to a regional sectarian war? America removed a minority Sunni regime in Iraq and replaced it with a majority Shiite regime, and the sectarian carnage continues. The Sunni majority in Syria will ultimately remove the minority Shiite regime and replace it with a majority Sunni regime, and the sectarian carnage will likely continue. An optimist would argue that America initiated the Arab Spring in Iraq. A pessimist would argue that America opened the gates of hell in Iraq. Russia no doubt fears the latter, but doesn't know how to shut the gates.
ReplyDeleteDo we? Can we? Does Obama even want to? Do we belong in a Civil War that will determine the fate of Russia in the Middle East? Or is this what Obama meant when he was speaking with Medvedev – “After the election I’ll have more time” – on that open microphone conversation last year?
The past five plus years have demonstrated that the President Obama does not have any ethical dimension for his foreign policy (or his domestic policy either) - Syria is but one example - let alone the question of intervening to uphold the principle of non-aggression against a sovereign state. As the West struggles with how to respond to Russia’s increasing military presence in the Crimean Peninsula — a move that followed months of protests culminating in the removal of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
ReplyDeleteFor the United States/western democracies to try and embarrass Russia by putting democracies in its backyard creates a source of recurrent irritation. The U.S. never liked having a Communist country 90 miles off its shores, and why should they. But for one botched military adventure and a blockade we have done nothing except keep in place many sanctions that have surprisingly kept Cuba poor and nearly undeveloped. Although I foresee the possibility that NATO would put an aircraft carrier group in the Bosporus Strait to block exit from the Black Sea — or have its own military exercises somewhere, let’s say Poland, as a show of counter force to the Russian troop deployment – the U.S. and its allies need to refocus the entire game plan. Going toe to toe and engaging militarily is a losing proposition.
We’ve heard this tune before, with satellite states and spheres of influence and dominoes – the lyrics are different but the song remains the same. It’s about projected power; oil/gas; a naval base and maritime power resources; and a hell of a lot of ego-based chest-puffing. Certainly NOT about ideology, democracy-vs.-communism — this is pure power and naked self-interest with a bunch of ego mixed in.
DeleteProfound to say the least.
ReplyDeleteAnd what happens if Putin uses his allies and sympathizers in eastern Ukraine to secede from the Ukraine? Does Western Ukraine use the army to stop them? I hardly think so. What happens if Putin stops natural gas shipments to the Ukraine? He has a fleet in Sevastapol that employs 25,000 Ukrainians in well paying, by Ukrainian standards, jobs.
ReplyDeleteThat's just for starters. Ukraine is not only broke; it needs an immediate $35 billion to stay afloat. Almost all of the heavy industry is located in the East and is dependent on the Russian market. What happens when the IMF imposes conditions for a loan that demands the end of subsidies for gas? What happens when Ukrainians freeze?
And, sadly, this entire generation of Ukrainian politicians is incompetent and the country has systemic corruption, no democratic institutions and no real Central Bank.
Don’t underestimate the problems and the leverage Putin can employ. This Ukrainian tale has only just begun.
I think you've hit the nail on the head Casey Pops. Syria & the Ukraine most assuredly has to come out the same.
ReplyDeleteWe have relatively the same major players (Syria & Ukraine are not the real dogs in this fight), they have the same personal strengths and weakness, the goals are the same with each ... so why not expect the identical finishes?
Oil, Gas, language, proximity, desire, a plan, and the mind of an old KGB player is all on Russia's side. We have Obama, a long ago community organizer of slum areas of Chicago. Who would anyone pick to win this chess match.