Tag: Syria

Syrian conflict: what is it all about and why we should be interested in it?

Posted on by Gediminas Goda

syria-1151151_1920Most Europeans do not possibly remember when they last saw a news show where the Syrian conflict was not mentioned. It sometimes appears that we almost got used to hearing about renewed bombings, numerous casualties and fruitless attempts of diplomats to alter the course of events in the Middle East region. However, taking a closer look at the developments in Syria might help to understand many processes in the contemporary world starting with the refugee crisis and ending with the continuing hostility between the United States and Russia.

The roots of the Syrian Civil War lie in 2011. Following the Arab Spring movements in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, public uprisings against the government of President Bashar al-Assad began in Damascus. The peoples of Syria, however, were not as successful in forcing their leader out of power as the protesters in North African countries. A civil war between the government and the rebels began.

In a short time the conflict was no longer limited by the Syrian borders. Iran’s support to Assad’s regime together with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States declaring their support to the rebel forces followed by the involvement of the United States (on rebels’ side) and Russia (on Assad’s side) caused a polarization of all the countries having interests in the Middle East region. The situation was even more complicated by the Kurds (a national minority in Northern Syria) renewing their struggle for independence.

Finally, the conflict gave an opportunity for the emergence of the Islamic State (also referred to as Daesh). The terrorist state was formed after the Syrian al-Qaeda branch fighting against Assad’s regime bearing the name of al-Nusra Front merged with the Islamic State of Iraq and occupied large territories in Eastern Syria. Daesh’s ambitions of establishing a global caliphate and several terrorist attacks have brought the attention of every single nation in the world towards Syria.

What are the results of all this mess? According to Amnesty International, the number of victims of the conflict had reached 220 000 by the end of 2015 and is constantly growing. During the five years of the conflict the economy of the country suffered irreversible damage, numerous human rights’ violations occurred and a chemical weapon was used. At the moment about 50 per cent of the Syrian population is displaced and 4 million people fled their country as refugees.

The question that one may ask is why the conflict continues? Who is it beneficial to? The ones who win the most are, doubtlessly, the terrorist groups. The lack of order in Syrian governmental institutions makes any control of Syrian territory almost impossible, thus allowing the Islamic State to establish its own institutional and economic mechanisms in the east of the country. Uncontrolled Syrian borders also give the IS a possibility to perform international terrorism.

However, the Islamic State is not the main factor preventing either the reconciliation between the rebels and Assad’s regime or the decisive victory of one of the sides. In some ways the situation in Syria surprisingly resembles the local conflicts of the Cold War that took place in Korea or Vietnam. The involvement of Russia and the United States on different belligerent sides turns Syria into the arena of an international conflict between the two greatest military powers in the world.

This clash of the two Cold War enemies also leads any legal international intervention attempts to an impasse: both countries have the right of veto in the United Nations Security Council, which makes passing an effective resolution to solve the Syrian Civil War issue practically impossible. From this point of view the situation cannot be expected to change soon as the conflict remains a matter of influence in the Middle East region which both Russia and the US always sought for.

European countries played little role in the beginning of the conflict but are now being drawn into it more and more firmly. Europe’s role in the Syrian conflict mainly consists of two aspects. First, Europe becomes one of the main destinations of civilians fleeing Syria. Some countries of the European Union advocate the open-door policy while others oppose it, thus causing the internal division of the EU. The problem aggravated as the continuing flow of Syrian migrants gave a pretext to many economic refugees from Northern Africa to search for a better life in Europe despite the absence of any military threats.

The other way in which Europe contributes towards the developments in Syria is the fight against the Islamic State. Following the attacks in Paris France and Great Britain have carried out several bombings in the territory of the IS. However, it is always difficult for democratic governments to receive the popular approval for military actions, which makes it doubtable whether the European role will be significant in giving a decisive blow to Daesh.

The main interest of the European Union is, of course, finishing the conflict. This would sustainably solve the refugee crisis and the newly formed Syrian government would be able to regain territory from the IS. But as military intervention is hardly possible and hardly desirable the main role the EU should play here is that of being a diplomatic intermediary striving to reconcile the belligerent sides. Remaining completely neutral is no longer possible: the conflict taking place in Syria is no longer a local one and it is a duty of every single nation in the world to contribute to solving it.

 

About the author:

Picture Gediminas GodaGediminas (18) took part in our workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2014. He attends International Baccalaureate course at Vilnius Lyceum and is dreaming of being a professor at university in the future. His interests are literature, politics and board games. More…

KILIAN KLEINSCHMIDT

Posted on by Silvija Kalinauskaitė

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With more than 800,000 asylum seeking refugees coming to Europe in 2015 only, the global refugee crisis has become one of the most sensitive and highly discussed topics of our time. The movement of undocumented migrants from various Middle East and African countries to the Mediterranean region that started in 2007 has now reached a critical point and evoked what is now called the European Refugee Crisis. The continent has proved itself not being politically, economically and culturally ready to deal with the influx of refugees who are seeking after humane living conditions and shelter from Syria, Afghanistan, Mali and other tense conflict areas. Dealing with the chaos of the sudden migration has been an ongoing concern and challenge of the European Union and other European countries.

As a European youth initiative, “My Europe” must be receptive and objective to the problems and challenges that regard our continent. Therefore, we encourage YOU to actively participate in the upcoming Live Chat and express your insights on the subject with a man who has almost longlived experience and expertise on the matter Kilian Kleinschmidt.

Mr. Kleinschmidt, the son of two teachers, grew up in Berlin, Germany. He did not become the “Good Samaritan” in an instant. Kilian Kleinschmidt started off as a carpenter and arguably found his calling for humanitarian work at the age of 26, after an aid worker invited him to help build a school near Timbuktu during Kleinschmidt’s motorbike trip to Mali. He has contributed his life and career to humanitarian purposes ever since.Mr. Kleinschmidt has been an active member of the United Nations and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees for 25 years during which he developed an impressive list of achievements as a humanitarian aid worker. In between his work in Uganda, Kenya and Bosnia, Kilian Kleinschmidt helped organize a camp for the so called ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’ who were displaced and orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War; has been a liaison and a coordination of UNHCR operations in the Great Lakes Region which has long been exhausted by civil war and conflict; coordinated one of the largest humanitarian airlifts in history for Rwandans caught in the rain forest in Congo to name only a few. All of his hard work, charisma and tireless persistence has earned him the nickname of a “Crisis Manager” in aid circles. Maybe because of this binding title Kilian Kleinschmidt was offered another challenging position the Senior Field Coordinator or as he calls it “the International Mayor” of the second largest refugee camp of Za’atari in Jordan.

In 2012 at the day the Za’atari camp was opened it provided shelter for only 100 families of Syrian refugees, however, during 4 years time the camp has outgrown 120,000 people. With its’ rapidly growing number of residents the refugee camp in Jordan is a living proof of the horror of the Syrian civil war and the regime of Bashar alAssad. When Kilian Kleinschmidt joined his fellow humanitarian workers in 2013 as their leader, what he had found was a campmonster with no objective information about the number of refugees and aid workers within the camp, an increasing number of violent acts, protests and reports of crime and numerous humanitarian problems concerning accommodation, energy, nutrition and water supply that needed to be fixed. As Kilian Kleinschmidt admitted “this is one of the most unruly places I have ruled.”

The Za’atari humanitarian workers with the help of UNHCR managed to accomplish its’ task of providing first aid to the Syrian refugees, to save thousands of lives, but the precarious atmosphere in the camp did not change. That was the moment Kilian Kleinschmidt started to question whether the standard procedure of providing the people only with opportunity to survive was enough. What he, as the “International Mayor” of Za’atari, had to deal with was not only 100,000 refugees in need of food and shelter, it was also 100,000 individual stories of people who have lost their home, family, friends and dignity. According to Mr. Kleinschmidt “we have learned through Za’atari that humanitarian aid tries to make us all equal same calories, the same liters of water, the same tents but it doesn’t really look into us as human beings.”

Discussions emerged and Kilian Kleinschmidt along with his team of aid workers, invited professional urbanists from all over the world to develop something he called a “more organic and more peopledriven” plan of the camp that would successfully connect the space, culture and the services within the camp. The new approach allowed the Syrian refugees to individualise their settlement in Za’atari with marketlike shops, various business ideas, even shop in socalled “International Supermarkets” where they could receive their monthly food aid using vouchers and avoiding undignifying queues in the storage room. Kilian Kleinschmidt and his groundbreaking approach helped to start making Za’atari a city rather than a refugee camp.

As Mr. Kleinschmidt once stated “What we learned through the camp, through the situation in Jordan, but also through the region, that we must think differently. We have to first of all comprehend the camps as living spaces, as temporary cities, whatever the duration is, and also where change can take place, where evolution of people can take place, and where, in fact, there is a unique opportunity to bring in different thinking and different concepts.”

Kilian Kleinschmidt proved himself to be a true believer of change and came up with many bold and even rather controversial ideas. One of them was an attempt to set up his own Za’atari Fab Lab a workshop providing access to digital fabrication tools and 3D printers to the refugees. The idea of refugees using modern technology to create things they needed seemed too futuristic to some critics. “That whole concept that you can connect a poor person with something that belongs to the 21st century is very alien to even most aid agencies,” Mr. Kleinschmidt stated, adding that “We have to get away from the concept that, because you have that status – migrant, refugee, martian, alien, whatever – you’re not allowed to be like everybody else.”

His position towards bringing the 21st century to the refugee camps were met with concern in the UN. Maybe that is why in the year of 2014 Mr. Kleinschmidt decided to leave the UNHCR and settle his own Innovation and Planning Agency in Vienna. His comment on the withdrawal from the UN work was that “I left the the UN to be as disruptive as possible, as provocative as possible, because within the UN of course there is certain discipline. I mean I was always the rebel. Humanitarian agencies cannot cope with the crisis. We’re doing humanitarian aid as we did 70 years ago after the Second World War. Nothing has changed” and according to Kilian Kleinschmidt our approach to the refugees MUST change.

What can be made to make the change reality? Let’s elaborate on this and many other questions that concerns You during the Live Chat. We kindly invite you to participate and do not miss out on an exceptional opportunity to discuss the global and European refugee crisis with one of the greatest experts in the humanitarian field Kilian Kleinschmidt.

 

Click HERE for direct link to the Live Chat!

 

About the author:

Picture Silvija Kalinauskaitė

Silvija (19) took part in our workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2014.  As many of her peers, she has not decided on a particular profession just yet; but Silvija would love to devote her life to a job that would serve the community, allowing her to challenge her abilities and intelligence. More…

From Syria to Germany: The story of 25 year-old Mohammed

Posted on by Mohammed Houssien

path-892947_1920My name is Mohammed. I am Palestinian. I am 25 years old. I was born in Attal, Damascus, Syria. I went to Lebanon to continue my studies as a nurse and graduated in 2007. Then I started working from 2010 until 2015. I decided to leave Lebanon because of the war and the bad and worse treatment and because of the absence of peace and safety in our country. Our frightful journey started when we left Lebanon. We traveled to Turkey by Air using one way ticket. From Turkey we moved to Greece by sea facing the dangers of the wild sea. We stayed standing on foot for seven hours outdoors suffering cold and bad weather conditions. It was raining heavily when we moved to the camp in Macedonia where the authority put us in trains and transferred us to Serbia. There we also had to walk on foot for three hours until we reached Hungary. We also crossed the distance from Austria on foot. Finally we reached Germany in September 2015 and I am still here. I speak Arabic and English and started to learn German. I am still struggling with the accent of some of the letters. But sooner or later we’ll be able to deal with the language. So far, I did not find it difficult to meet Germans. They welcomed us with sympathy, love and warmth. They felt with our suffering and our state. It is something interesting, nice and wonderful to deal and interact with Germans from the region where I am currently staying. It shows equality and cultural interactions between citizens, refugees, tourists and every person in Germany. In Frankfurt I went to an event where refugees and Germans met to cook and eat together. It was nice to learn about the traditions of this country: how the citizens offer food and the traditional way of offering food. It is interesting to see how different countries have different specialties. All these social and traditional ways of cooking and interaction among people enrich and build friendship among them. All this may help refugees to interact and get acquainted with the traditional, educational and social traditions in Germany. It is an organization that shapes the opinion of refugees about Germany. It is important to deal with people from all around the world. If you don’t know their language, you will not be able to interact and understand their words. I have attended the cooking event twice and was so happy to make new friends and learn about their social and cultural tradition. And I wish to join and share any similar festivals or activities. I would also like to tell others about my culture and contribute to society and offer my duties and activities, to make myself proud, show that I am a good person and leave a good impression in Germany.

mo - KopieAbout the author:

Mohammed is a 25-year old Palestinian who was born in Syria and now lives in Germany. More…

Refugee crisis

Posted on by Mónica Martínez

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“The number of people living as refugees from war or persecution exceeded 50 million in 2013, for the first time since World War Two” states a report by the UN refugee agency. Not surprisingly at all, the current refugee crisis has become one of the most widely debated issues due to its repercussion on a global scale. While everyone agrees that the origin of such crisis was the Arab Spring, a series of peaceful, pro-democracy movements that began in 2011 across the Middle East which, unfortunately, led to terrible wars in Libya and Syria, most people fail to have similar ideas regarding what should be done in order to tackle the problem of how to host millions of people.

The notion that Europe should take in a number of refugees as large as necessary has been backed up by many using the following arguments. In the first place, since the article 14 of the UDHR states that everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy asylum in other countries, the advocates of an open European border claim that it is the duty of all to host the refugees. Besides the fact that it is a basic human right, empathy makes people want to help to the extent possible to those exposed to inhumane situations; would a normal person not want help when he has been forced to abandon everything he knew, to live in harsh conditions in refugee camps, or even to attempt to cross seas with no safety measures risking his life and the lives of his loved ones? Secondly, developing regions hosted 86% of the world’s refugees. Taking into account that according to UNHCR, it would cost $20,537,705 only to finance the Syria Regional Refugee Coordination Office, it becomes clear that the costs are high. Developing countries appear to simply not be able to afford to invest the necessary money on refugee camps as opposed to European countries. Lastly, refugees have skills, talents and aspirations, and the ability to contribute socially and economically.

On the other hand, a number of European nations have made it clear they are not willing to welcome many newcomers, despite the current crisis, e.g., Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban built a barbed-wire fence along Hungary’s border with Serbia and introduced a new migratory law making any fence crossing a criminal offense. Those who agree with the Hungarian Prime Minister often argue that taking in all asylum-seekers would have a negative effect on European societies as well as economies. Refugees will not only be a “loss of capital” for the states but also a threat to their civic identity. People shudder at the sight of the potential change that the refugees might bring with them, something which contributes to the rise of an anti-immigration feeling. Illustrating this point, Orban stated: “Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian?”

In conclusion, the EU has announced an emergency quota system that will spread out the influx of refugees across its member states, aiming to improve the situation and avoid irrevocable mistakes. I strongly support the opinion of having open European borders for all Syrians and Afghans and honestly believe that the European Union should be realistic about the number of refugees that will arrive in the near future to our continent as to handle the crisis appropriately.

 

About the author:

Photo Mónica Martínez Jorge is 16-year-old student from Spain who is interested in politics.