Comprising updates on the article, "Let Refugees Remain in Their Own Culture Zones," which argues that Syrians should go to Saudi Arabia and other nearby, rich countries, not the West:
Oct. 2, 2013 update: António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, has announced that 15 governments have accepted special quotas for Syrian refugees, including the American and many European ones. Kristalina Georgieva, the European Union's commissioner for humanitarian affairs and crisis response, said that "We in Europe must not only keep our hearts and wallets open, but also our borders."
Comment: I await hearing her Saudi counterpart saying the same.
Nov. 15, 2013 update: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has called on the Greek and Bulgarian governments to stop turning back Syrians fleeing the civil war: "Push-backs and prevention of entry can put asylum-seekers at further risk and expose them to additional trauma," demanding an immediate secesation of such practices. Agence France Press notes that more than 10,000 Syrians and others have crossed illegally from Turkey into Bulgaria in 2013.
Also of interest: in response to Bulgarian plans to build a 30-kilometre fence by the Turkish border, a UNHCR spokesman stated that "Introducing barriers, like fences or other deterrents, may lead people to undertake more dangerous crossings and further place refugees at the mercy of smugglers."
Comments: (1) If the Syrian refugees have arrived safely to Turkey, why should further states admit them? They are no longer refugees in search of asylum. Or is this because Turkey does not count as a destination, only Christian-majority countries of Europe do?
(2) What a logic! Building defensive fences puts refugees at great risk of smugglers? How about they just don't try to enter Bulgaria illegally in the first place?
Nov. 26, 2013 update: I focused on culture in the above article; there is also the hygienic dimension. One third of the approximately 350 Syrian refugees treated in Israeli hospitals have been found to carry high levels of dangerous pathogens rare in Israel and resistant to antibiotics. The carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae bacteria, Israel Hayom reports,
can pass from patient to patient and be carried by hospital staff, and result in serious infections that are especially dangerous to older patients and those with weakened immune systems. One-third of patients infected by these bacteria fall seriously ill and some die. The Health Ministry's main concern is that the germs brought in by Syrian patients will linger in Israeli hospitals and then to spread to other hospitals throughout Israel.
A Health Ministry document warned in November that Syrian patients "require additional isolation beyond the normal standards, in a separate room with a special staff." "Hospitals have inadequate infrastructure that do not allow for proper isolation," the document warned. "The potential danger to the hospitals is that the germs will proliferate and the problem will persist for years after the Syrians have been released."
Dec. 13, 2013 update: Amnesty International (AI) wants European Union member states to take in more Syrian refugees while not saying a word about Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states doing likewise. It published a scathing report titled "Fortress Europe: Syrian refugee shame exposed" and Salil Shetty, AI's secretary general, states that "The EU has miserably failed to play its part in providing a safe haven to the refugees who have lost all but their lives. The number of those it's prepared to resettle is truly pitiful. Across the board European leaders should hang their heads in shame.
Dec. 14, 2013 update: Another negative consequence of Syrian immigration to Europe: the boosting of neo-Nazi parties. Andrew Higgins explains developments in Svilengrad, Bulgaria, at "Far Right in Eastern Europe Makes Gains as Syrians Arrive":
After spreading turmoil and desperate refugees across the Middle East, Syria's brutal civil war has now leaked misery into Europe's eastern fringe and put a spring in the step of Angel Bozhinov, a nationalist activist in this Bulgarian border town next to Turkey. The local leader of Ataka, a pugnacious, far-right party, Mr. Bozhinov lost his seat in the town council at the last municipal elections in 2011 but now sees his fortunes rising thanks to public alarm over an influx of Syrian refugees across the nearby frontier.
Membership of the local branch of Ataka, he said, had surged in recent weeks as "people come up to me in the street and tell me that our party was right." Ataka, which means attack, champions "Bulgaria for Bulgarians" and has denounced Syrian refugees as terrorists whom Bulgaria, the European Union's poorest nation, must expel. An Ataka member of Parliament has reviled them as "terrible, despicable primates." With populist, anti-immigrant parties gathering momentum across much of Europe, Ataka stands out as a particularly shrill and, its critics say, sinister political force an example of how easily opportunistic groups can stoke public fears while improving their own fortunes. ...
Ataka's denunciations of foreigners and local minorities like the Roma, or Gypsies, along with its demands for the return of "lost" Bulgarian territory, have pushed it to the forefront of a chauvinistic, nationalist trend gaining ground in several former Communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. ...
Ataka's one constant has been its vicious rhetoric against foreigners and minorities. Alfa Television, a station operated by Ataka, denounces the refugees as radical Islamists and scroungers who will only bring violence and deeper poverty to Bulgaria. Speaking recently on Alfa, which calls itself the "television of truth," Magdelena Tasheva, an Ataka member of Parliament, said, "They are not refugees; they are terrorists." She has also called them "savages," "scum," and "mass murderers." She compared them to monkeys.
Dec. 29, 2013 update: Syrian refugees in Turkey have brought 17 recently reported cases of polio to the country after an absence of 14 years and completely eradicated for 11 years.
Jan. 7, 2014 update: (1) Two important U.S. senators, Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Ted Cruz, have called for an increase in the number of Syrian refugees taken in by the United States.
(2) Figures from the British Home Office reveal that Great Britain has granted asylum to more than 2,000 Syrians since March 2011 and 1,500 of them since January 2013.
Jan. 10, 2014 update: About American actions, from the Wall Street Journal:
A U.S. official stated publicly for the first time this week that some of the 30,000 especially vulnerable Syrians the United Nations hopes to resettle by the end of 2014 will be referred to the U.S. for resettlement. ... The U.S. has not set a specific target for how many refugees it will resettle. But at a Senate hearing Tuesday, State Department Assistant Secretary Anne Richard said, "We expect to accept referrals for several thousand Syrian refugees in 2014."
Another fact: More than 1,300 Syrians already in the U.S. applied for asylum during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2013.
Jan. 12, 2014 update: UPI reports that "About 135,000 Syrian refugees have applied for asylum in the United States," a number quite at variance with the Wall Street Journal one just above.
Jan. 17, 2014 update: Speaking at the 2nd Ministerial Meeting of the Syria-Bordering Countries on Friday, Guterres said that "Hosting Syrian refugees is not responsibility of only the bordering countries, all states should open their gates to Syrians fleeing the country."
Jan. 28, 2014 update: The maltreatment of Syrian refugees in North Africa symbolizes the problem I have raised: attempting to reach the sanctuary of Europe, they are abused in Algeria and Morocco. From an Associated Press report:
Morocco's Interior Ministry issued an official statement Tuesday protesting what it said was the rise in expulsion of Syrian refugees onto Moroccan territory by Algeria. The statement said that between Sunday and Tuesday some 77 Syrians, including 18 women and 43 children had been expelled. The statement follows up on similar accusations in Moroccan media over the past week.
The spokesman for Algeria's Foreign Ministry, Amar Belani, said Thursday that the stories of expulsions were complete lies by the Moroccan "pseudo-media that specializes in nauseating bubbling of the anti-Algerian media swamp." Algerian security forces along the border told the Algerian state news agency on Monday that in fact it was the Moroccans who were expelling Syrians into Algeria. "The gendarmes refused access to the national territory to Syrian refugees that the Moroccan authorities wanted to expel to Algeria," said Col. Mohammed Boualleg. "It was after this refusal that the Moroccan authorities called on their media to wrongly accuse the Algerians of expelling Syrians."
And then this charming piece of information: "In the past, when Morocco has caught Africans who entered from Algeria hoping to cross into Europe, it expelled them into the deserts along the border with Algeria."
 A cartoon in Makka, a Saudi daily, shows a man in Persian Gulf attire pointing the refugee to the door marked with European Union stars and saying to the European, "Why don't you let them in, you impolite people?!" |
Jan. 29, 2014 update: The British government has agreed to accept several hundred at-risk Syrian refugees. This comes on top of contributing about $1 billion in humanitarian aid to displaced Syrians and accepting about 3,500 asylum-seekers over the past three years. UNHCR described the move in a statement as "an encouraging and important step ... in support of more than 2.3 million Syrian refugees and the countries hosting them," while Amnesty International called the move "long overdue."
Sep. 26, 2014 update: The United Nations High Commission for Refugees expects, due to conflict and instability in the Middle East and Africa, that asylum-seekers in the West and East Asia will reach their highest level since the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
"More than 330,700 people applied for asylum in a group of 44 countries in Europe, North America and parts of the Asia-Pacific region in the first half of the year, the refugee agency reported, almost a quarter more than in the last half of 2013," reports the New York Times. The largest group, 48,400, are Syrians. Iraqis, Afghans, and Eritreans total almost another 60,000 applicants. As for destinations:
More than two-thirds of asylum seekers in the first half of the year sought entry to six countries, including four Western European countries, Turkey and the United States. Some 52,800 asylum seekers applied to get into the United States, more than one-third of them from Mexico and Central America escaping drug cartel and organized crime violence, although China, as in previous years, was the main country of origin. Germany, Sweden and France were among the most sought-after destinations, particularly by Syrians, while Italy, the destination of thousands of migrants smuggled across the Mediterranean from North Africa, saw rising asylum claims from West African countries.
Dec. 10, 2014 update: The UNHCR pulled together representatives of governments in the hope of winning pledges to take more Syria refugees, which it got. Of course, all the attention is on Western countries, with not a word about Saudi Arabia or the other Persian Gulf monarchies.
Dec. 20, 2014 update: Amnesty International reports in Left Out in the Cold: Syrian Refugees Abandoned by the International Community that the six GCC states, population nearly 50 million, accepted a total of 5 (five) asylum requests from Syrian refugees.
 Amnesty International statistics. |
Dec. 21, 2014 update: In a highly critical article about PEGIDA, the new anti-immigrant organization in Germany, Der Spiegel writes:
Many Dresden residents also let their imaginations run wild at the Monday protests. One demonstrator says that he doesn't want to see his granddaughters being forced to wear headscarves in the future, while another suggests that Islamists would be better off seeking asylum in wealthy, oil-producing countries.
Run wild? Both possibilities seem quite real to me.
Jan. 18, 2015 update: The global leftist movement Avaaz, which claims tens of millions of members and calls itself "a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere," has issued a plea for wealthy Persian Gulf countries to take in Syrian refugees. Excerpts of its text, "Gulf countries: open your doors to Syrian refugees!":
To all leaders of the Arab Gulf countries:
As concerned citizens from across the region, we urge you to open your doors to Syrian refugees. Neighboring countries have reached breaking point and need your support to relocate and save refugees fleeing the war. ...
From Turkey to Sweden to Australia, governments around the world have welcomed Syrian refugees. But until this day, wealthy Gulf countries who have the money and space have yet to open their doors to desperate Arabs who need it most. If thousands of us pressure them to welcome Syrian refugees in their nations, we can get them to act.
Comment: How interesting that a far-left organization should be the only one so far that shares my views on this issue. July 18, 2015 update: After a half year, 26,400 have signed the above appeal.
Apr. 17, 2015 update: "U.N. Calls on Western Nations to Shelter Syrian Refugees" reads the headline of a major New York Times article by Somini Sengupta. Excerpts:
With Syria's neighbors increasingly shutting their borders to refugees and thousands trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of safety, the war in Syria is creating the worst global refugee crisis in decades, putting new pressure on the United States and other Western countries to open their doors — and in turn, prompting domestic political backlash.
Not since the wave of people who fled Southeast Asia after the war in Vietnam have the world's industrialized countries been under such intense pressure to share the burden of taking in refugees, experts say. Nor has the task of offering sanctuary been so politically fraught.
The United States is scheduled to take in its largest group of Syrian refugees to date — up to 2,000 by the fall of this year, compared with a total of about 700 since the civil war in Syria began four years ago, according to the State Department. But the plan is stirring pushback from Republican lawmakers in Congress, who are increasingly vocal about the fear that terrorists may sneak in with the refugees.
António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, has called for Western countries to take in 130,000 Syrian refugees over the next two years. Some aid groups are pushing for this number as well:
They contend that the United States should take in at least half of the people the United Nations refugee agency wants to resettle in the West, which would amount to about 65,000 Syrians in the next two years. That is the equivalent of nearly all refugees the United States takes in from all countries in an average year. "This is an unprecedented crisis," said Anna Greene, director of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee. "If the United States doesn't lead, other countries aren't going to either." ...
In the West, Germany has pledged to resettle the largest batch of Syrian refugees — about 30,000 — while Canada has said it would let in just over 11,000, according to the United Nations.
May 14, 2015 update: The New York Times published an epically idiotic opinion piece today titled "Let Syrians Settle Detroit" by David D. Laitin and Marc Jahr. They note that Detroit has "about 70,000 abandoned buildings, the governor of Michigan has called for 50,000 immigrants to move in and revitalize Detroit, and there are millions of Syrian refugees desperately looking for a place to settle. Indeed, Laitin and Jahr say the Syrians "would be an ideal community" to fix up Motor City, as Arab-Americans already have "a vibrant and successful presence" in the city. They also claim that "resettling destitute, innocent refugees" both fulfills America's moral commitments and sends a message to the outside world.
Are these authors, a professor at Stanford University and the former president of the New York City Housing Development Corporation, respectively, truly unaware of the cultural incompatibilities between Syrians and Americans? Or are they ignoring this elephant in the room because they have an agenda to increase the number of voters for the Democratic party? Whatever their motive, the effect is deeply damaging.
June 1, 2015 update: Here's a "statistical snapshot" for Saudi Arabia from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' website:
June 4, 2015 update: "UN agency urges EU to host many more refugees" reads the Associated Press headline. As usual, no mention of Saudi Arabia or the other Persian Gulf states.
July 13, 2015 update: Here's a sign that Syrian refugees agree with my "cultural zone" argument: The Turkish Red Crescent Society (Türk Kızılayı) surveyed Syrian refugees living in Turkey and found that 78 percent of them want to stay put in that country and 16 percent want to move on to Europe. While the number surveyed (327) is low, a nearly 5-to-1 ratio does stand out. Comment: One wonders what the numbers would look like for refugees in Saudi Arabia.
Sep. 2, 2015 updates: (1) Amira Fathalla of the BBC asks why Syrian refugees are trying to enter European countries and "why they are not heading to wealthy Gulf states closer to home."
Officially, Syrians can apply for a tourist visa or work permit in order to enter a Gulf state. But the process is costly, and there is a widespread perception that many Gulf states have unwritten restrictions in place that make it hard for Syrians to be granted a visa in practice.
Some Gulf residents feel guilty about this:
The relative wealth and proximity to Syria of the states has led many - in both social and as well as traditional media - to question whether these states have more of a duty than Europe towards Syrians suffering from over four years of conflict and the emergence of jihadist groups in the country.
Then follow a number of examples of this remorse, including a cartoon in Makkah newspaper from Saudi Arabia shows a man in traditional Gulf clothing looking out of a door with barbed wire around it and pointing at the door over with the EU flag on it. "Why don't you let them in, you discourteous people?!" he asks of the Europeans.
The analysis concludes that appeals from social media, notwithstanding, "Gulf states' position seems unlikely to shift in favour of Syrian refugees."
(2) Sep. 2, 2015 update: A Kuwaiti official, Fahad al-Shalami, explained that Syrians should not seek refuge in the GCC states because these countries
are too expensive for refugees. Our countries are only fit for [migrant] workers. It's too costly to relocate them here. Kuwait is too expensive for them as opposed to Lebanon and Turkey, which are cheap. They are better suited for the Syrian refugees. In the end, it is not right for us to accept a people that are different from us from another place. We don't want people in our society suffering from internal stress and trauma.
(That's a particularly interesting perspective when one recalls how, 25 years ago, Kuwaitis themselves suffered as refugees.)
Sep. 4, 2015 updates: (1) "Syria's Refugees Feel More Welcome in Europe Than in the Gulf" reads the headline to an article written by Donna Abu-Nasr and two others for Bloomberg. "Syrians who want an 'honorable life' say that's something they can hope for in western Europe, not the Gulf states" reads the subhead. It starts with the example of a 36-year-old Syrian, Yassir Batal. He says
Germany and its unfamiliar voices and customs are more enticing for his wife and five children than the wealthy Arab states whose culture, religion and language they share. Like so many other Syrians who have escaped civil war, the has ruled out heading south through Jordan to Saudi Arabia or beyond. They wouldn't be welcomed the same way, he said.
"In Europe, I can get treatment for my polio, educate my children, have shelter and live an honorable life," said Batal, as he left a United Nations office in Beirut, the city that's been the crossroads for more than a million refugees since the violence started in March 2011. "Gulf countries have closed their doors in the face of Syrians."
Some Europeans are also upset about this, including Danish Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen: "I'm most indignant over the Arab countries who are rolling in money and who only take very few refugees. Countries like Saudi Arabia. It's completely scandalous."
Michael Stephens of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies notes that "The Gulf states have always been very worried about security threats from Syrian refugees."
Tariq Al Shammari, a Saudi who heads the Council of Gulf International Relations lobby group, dismissed the criticism as "nonsense" and unfair: "The Europeans turned a blind eye to what was happening in Syria until the crisis reached their shores. They just want to lay the blame on someone else."
(2) Boaz Bismuth of Israel Hayom raises my question:
The dreadful civil war in Syria has claimed over 200,000 lives and has displaced over 4 million people. ... one question still looms large over this story. Where are the Arab states? Where is Arab solidarity? Where are Saudi Arabia's billions of dollars? Where are Qatar's billions or the Emirates' billions? Millions of Syrian refugees are in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan today but hundreds of thousands more are already in Europe, as well. We are sitting on a powder keg.
Sep. 6, 2015 update: The Times of Israel's Elhanan Miller looked at Syrian applications to GCC countries for asylum and finds on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees website that
Saudi Arabia received a grand total of 12 Syrian applications, of which four were recognized;
Oman received four applications and recognized none;
Kuwait received 12 and recognized seven;
Bahrain received three and rejected them all;
the United Arab Emirates received 23 applications, of which it recognized nine; and
Qatar received seven applications, recognizing all but one.
Miller cites the example of Abu Omar, a 49-year-old Syrian living in Germany since 1990 and now trying to win asylum in Germany for 23 members of his family living in Syria. He never thought of their going to the GCC:
The Gulf states treat us Syrians very, very poorly. They don't accept any refugees from Syria, and make life difficult for Syrians living there. Syrians know 100% that Gulf states have no mercy on them... They are treated like third-class citizens. Indians get more respect in the Gulf than Syrians.
Sep. 8, 2015 update: For a collection of self-critical excerpts from the Arab press about the refugee crisis, with such titles as "The Silence of the Wealthy Gulf States in the Face of the Refugee Crisis Is Deafening" and "We [Saudis] Are a Nauseating Nation Whose Sense of Humanity Has Become Dull," click here.
 Cartoon by a Palestinian. |
Sep. 9, 2015 update: UKIP leader Nigel Farage asks indignantly why the rich Arab states are not taking immigrants.
Sep. 11, 2015 update: In a useful apology for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Abdulateef Al-Mulhim writes in Arab News "They Are Our Guests, Not Refugees." In it, he documents Saudi hospitality for those in need since even before the creation of the modern state in 1932 – during and after World War I, Palestinians, Yemenis, Kuwaitis, and Lebanese – but calling them (as the title implies) guests, not refugees. Then, with the Arab uprisings, "More than half a million Syrians were given residency status and never called refugees. They work and live side by side with Saudis." To this he adds more than 600,000 Yemenis.
In other words, Mulhim continues, "Saudi Arabia has been and still is a safe destination for those who need help and shelter." But they never call the Yemenis or Syrians refugees and so the statistics show no refugees entering the KSA.
Comments: (1) Mulhim does have a point; in part, the problem is one of semantics. But he protests too much; the fact is that Syrians, Yemenis, and many others are clamoring to be let in to Europe, not Saudi.
(2) Arab governments in general do not recognize the legal concept of a refugee. Rather, they use the term guests because it implies that they are not permanent but will return home one day. Arab leaders did not sign the 1951 international convention on refugee rights, with its goal of permanent settlement in host countries or resettlement in third-party states. That's because, then and now, Arab states resist the idea of resettling Palestinians, insisting that they should return to their homes in what is now Israel. This attitude, born in the 1940s, still shapes attitudes generations later.
Sep. 12, 2015 update: In a completely surprising piece of news, the official Saudi Press Agency quotes an unnamed official at the Foreign Ministry announcing that, since 2011, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken in about 2½ million Syrians on religious and humanitarian grounds; it does not consider them to be refugees and does not house them in camps "in order to ensure their dignity and safety." More surprising yet, the official says it offered residency to hundreds of thousands of those Syrians.
More details summarized by the Associated Press:
Saudi Arabia did not specify how many of those Syrians admitted remain in the country, saying only that those who wished to stay — a figure it put at "some hundreds of thousands" — have been granted residency status.
That status gives the Syrians access to work, schools and free medical care, according to the statement. It said Saudi public schools have accepted more than 100,000 Syrian students.
The kingdom had not intended to discuss its efforts to aid Syrians and "did not wish to boast about its efforts or attempt to gain media coverage," but felt compelled to disclose some figures in light of what it called "erroneous and misleading information," according to the report.
The Saudi statement also told of giving about $700 million in support of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon.
Also, the same Associated Press story indicates that the United Arab Emirates government says it "provided residency permits to more than 100,000 Syrians who have entered the country since 2011. It said more than 242,000 Syrian nationals currently live in the country."
Comments: Sorry, but I don't believe it. How could 2½ million Syrian refugees have gone to Saudi Arabia without anyone noticing? For what it's worth, Amnesty International states that the five Gulf countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates "have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees."
Sep. 13, 2015 update: Barry Shaw of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies agrees with my analysis:
wealthy Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, with vast tracts of barren land, might be persuaded to join the world in accepting Arabic-speaking coreligionists and help them build new productive lives that contribute to the state. To the west of the Libyan ports, from where thousands of migrants set out on a perilous Mediterranean journey, lie Algeria and Morocco. ...
It must be asked why these Arab nations have remained silent. There can only be one reason. They are equally as reluctant to accept these migrants as many European nations have been. ... The Arab world, which is at least partly responsible for the mayhem and destruction of this the migrant whirlwind, might be persuaded by the international community to share the burden and open their gates to people of the same faith and of the same tongue.
While Europeans agonize over their moral consciences as they cope with the humanitarian crisis, the Arab leaders have not expressed any remorse or compassion over the fate of their fellow Arabs and coreligionists. This is unacceptable.
Sep. 15, 2015 update: The outside world just woke up to the fact that the Saudi government has built over 100,000 air-conditioned, fireproof tents equipped with kitchen and bathroom facilities that could house three million refugees. The tents, just outside Mecca in the religious site of Mina, are only used three days a year to hold pilgrims on the hajj.
 The tent city for pilgrims in Mina, Saudi Arabia. |
Sep. 16, 2015 update: Dennis MacEoin surveys recent opinions about GCC states not taking in refugees:
Criticism of the Gulf States is growing. Sarah Hashash, Middle East and North Africa press officer at Amnesty International, has "called the Gulf Arab states' behavior 'utterly shameful' and criticized Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for officially taking in zero refugees."
Another NGO official, Oxfam's Syria country director, Daniel Gorevan, has likewise stated that "Gulf countries clearly can and should do an awful lot more." "I'm most indignant over the Arab countries who are rolling in money and who only take very few refugees," Danish Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said in an interview at his office in Copenhagen. "Countries like Saudi Arabia. It's completely scandalous."
Even commentators in the Gulf region have expressed dissatisfaction with the response. Sultan Sooud al Qassemi, a journalist in the UAE, has complained, saying that the Gulf States should open their doors: "The Gulf states often complain that the Arabic language is underused and that our culture is under threat due to the large number of foreign immigrants. Here is an opportunity to host a group of people who can help alleviate such concerns and are in need of refuge, fleeing a brutal war."
Sep. 20, 2015 update: Reporting for National Public Radio, Deborah Amos asks "Why don't the richest Gulf Arab states resettle these desperate refugees?" She starts by noting home-grown criticism:
Even Gulf Arab citizens are raising the question: #ShameOnArabRulers is trending on Middle Eastern Twitter accounts. "Why don't you let them in, you discourteous people?" was the punchline of a cartoon in a Saudi newspaper.
Then she notes the explanations: Anwar Gargash, the UAE minister of state for Foreign Affairs, denied the whole premise: "We see criticism that does not correspond to the reality." His ambassador in Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, gave specifics: "Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, the U.A.E. has welcomed more than 100,000 Syrians, joining 140,000 already residing in the emirates. The Emirates' per capita commitment to the Syrian crisis exceeds virtually every other country's participation."
Randa Slim at the Middle East Institute sees the Gulf countries fearful that the Syrian refugees "will bring their fight with them." And the UAE, "given its neighborhood, can't afford to do this."
Amos adds:
While it's true that the Gulf States have allowed thousands of Syrians to come on work visas, many Syrians say they face severe restrictions in these countries. Some have decided they would rather risk the difficult road to Europe. "I will live here for five years, ten years, and then what?" says Dahlia, a Syrian who fled her home in Aleppo and joined relatives in the Gulf city-state of Dubai. "You never belong, you never feel you are safe, your residency can be canceled at any time and then what? Go where?" Citizenship is not an option, even for workers who stay for decades.
Sep. 21, 2015 update: A Christian Science Monitor editorial notes that Syrian refugees are conspicuously not fleeing toward the Islamic State's caliphate.
People around the world have reacted differently to images of refugees desperately trying to reach Europe from Syria's four-year civil war. Yet one group, Islamic State (IS), may be the most unsettled. Since last year, the jihadi group has tried to set up an idealized Islamic society, or caliphate, and attract Sunni Muslims with its anti-Western message. Instead, hundreds of thousands of Syrian Muslims are now choosing to flee to Western countries. IS has lost one of its strongest recruitment lines – that the West is no place to live or emulate.
Good point. ISIS is repugnant to Muslims who can make a choice.
Sep. 30, 2015 update: Lori Plotkin Boghardt of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy notes the confusion that surrounds the extent to which GCC states have taken in Syrian refugees, with figures ranging "from zero to the millions." She finds that
The number of Syrians now living in the Gulf who arrived after the start of the Syrian war in 2011 is likely several hundred thousand. The majority are in Saudi Arabia and the UAE—the two most populous Gulf states. ... Like all other foreigners, the "new" Syrians live in the Gulf monarchies on a conditional basis with temporary permits.
In Saudi Arabia, a reasonable estimate for the number of new Syrians is in the low hundreds of thousands. ... The UAE has provided more than 100,000 Syrians with residency permits since 2011, according to Emirati statements. ... For Qatar, the most reliable figures range from 19,000 to 25,000. ... Kuwait has taken the most restrictive position toward Syrians seeking work or refuge.
She offers several "pressures that cut to the core of Gulf state stability" which will cause the monarchies to continue these policies: the already high percentage of noncitizens, falling oil prices, high youth unemployment rates among nationals, and an increased sense of vulnerability vis-à-vis Iran. They also about allowing in large numbers of highly politicized Syrians. Plus, they don't generally accept immigrants on a permanent basis.
She concludes that "serious obstacles remain to a wider opening for new Syrian economic migrants. Indeed, such opportunities are reported to be contracting."
Nov. 14, 2015 update: U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican of Tennessee), a candidate for president: "I would not admit 200,000 people from Syria. I would say, 'Look, Saudi Arabia, you trade with us, you get great benefit from us, you've been throwing gasoline on this fire — Saudi Arabia, you need to accept some of these refugees'."
Nov. 17, 2015 update: Poland's Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski suggests that Syrian immigrants in Europe form an army which returns to liberate their home country, instead of "drinking coffee in the cafes of Berlin" while Western soldiers confront ISIS. Comment: That's what the Polish soldiers who'd fled Poland did in World War II.
Nov. 28, 2015 update: (1) French Prime Minister Manuel Valls wants the Persian Gulf states to accept more Syrian refugees: "Europe cannot accept all the refugees coming from Syria. ... Every country must play its part; I'm thinking particularly of the Gulf states."
(2) U.S. presidential aspirant Ben Carson agrees. The Associated Press paraphrases him saying that it "would be best to absorb Syrian refugees in Middle Eastern host countries."
Dec. 1, 2015 update: Douglas J. Feith makes similar points to mine in the Wall Street Journal at "An Obvious, Unused Home For Refugees: The Arabian Peninsula's oil-rich nations are oddly absent in talks about where those fleeing Syria can go."
Feb. 29, 2016 update: More than 50 Syrian refugees reportedly have been barred from returning to Kuwait, reducing the already paltry numbers there even further. (The Kuwaiti government in 2014 claimed to have taken in more than 130,000 Syrian nationals but I don't believe this number.)
Mar. 7, 2016 update: Michael Rubin asks "Why haven't the [Middle Eastern] refugees gone to the many countries closer to Syria and Iraq, in terms of language and geography, than Europe?" His answers include "the oil-rich monarchies in the Persian Gulf have largely slammed the door shut against refugees," economic opportunities in Europe, and welfare there.
July 24, 2016 update: Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, raised the topic of Syrian refugees going to the Persian Gulf countries in an interview on Meet the Press.
Donald Trump: I would stop the Syrian migration and the Syrian from coming into this country in two seconds. Hillary Clinton wants to take 550 percent more people coming in from that area than Barack Obama. I think she's crazy. I think she's crazy. We have no idea who these people are for the most part. ... There is no way that you can vet some of these people. ...
Chuck Todd: You realize some of these folks have nowhere to go? They're truly victims of this civil war, what do you do with them?
DT: We will help them and we will build safe havens over in Syria, and we will get Gulf States to pay for it, because we, right now, we're going to have $21 trillion in debt very soon. We will do safe havens and safe zones in Syria and we will get nations that are so wealthy that are not doing anything. They're not doing much. They have nothing but money. And you know who I'm talking about, the Gulf States. And we will get them to pay for it.
Aug. 1, 2016 update: Paul Nehlen, who is challenging House Speaker Paul Ryan in the Republican primary: "There's over 50 Islamic countries in the world. Why are we taking them here? There are whole tent cities in Saudi Arabia. There are safe countries – UAE, Oman. Why aren't they going there? Why are they coming to the United States? Let them fill those countries up first."
