There’s no going home for millions of Syrian refugees
Just when it seemed that Syria’s bloody civil war could get no worse, it has.
As Russian air strikes and increased fighting force more people to flee their homes, an escalating number of lives are risked and lost in the struggle for safety, and desperation is reaching new levels.
“This is one of the largest displacement crises of modern times,” UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien told the Securi- ty Council Tuesday. “Fighting and violence has forced over half the people in Syria from their homes in a period of just over four years, many of them multiple times.”
Over 120,000 have fled their homes since early October, when Russia began air strikes and the Syrian regime launched a new ground campaign in the north, he said. More than 4 million Syrians have now left the country, many of them taking perilous journeys to Europe.
After months of wrangling, beleaguered European Union leaders have agreed to set up reception centres to process and hold some100,000 people, and are fearful of a new tidal wave of migrants.
But those who have fled the wars in Syria and Iraq face a more bitter reality.
Forced to abandon their homes and strike out for unknown lands, they can’t go home again.
The massive movement of people is reminiscent of “the great sorting out” of the Second World War, expert says
As years of sectarian and factional fighting grind on, the ethno-religious cleansing that has driven Syrians and Iraqis from their countries in growing numbers has created new demographic borders, and dilemmas and divisions for their Middle Eastern neighbours.
As old borders dissolve and new ones are formed by facts on the ground, it is clear that whether running from Islamist militants or government attacks, millions of people displaced by war are gone for good.
The countries they knew as sovereign states are rapidly vanishing behind them — along with the treasured symbols of their past.
The massive movement of people is reminiscent of “the great sorting out” of the Second World War, says Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma. But the West is slow to come to terms with the stark reality that two of the Middle East’s once iron-clad states have crumbled.
“America is trying to talk a language that doesn’t exist anymore — Iraqi and Syrian ‘nationalism’ and ‘powersharing.’ This is a giant battle for who will own the land. For minorities it’s a zero-sum game.”
The result is a reconfiguration of the Middle East, rippling out from Iraq and Syria to neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
“Even if the West finds a strategy to wipe out the Islamic State, the homes (refugees) return to will be filled by others,” says Samuel Tadros of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. “We’re seeing a great movement of people that at some point will be irreversible.”
In Iraq, the demographic disaster that began with the U.S. invasion to oust Saddam Hussein spurred the rise of sectarian militias and displaced more than three million Sunnis, Shiites and minorities inside the country. Now close to 500,000 have fled to neighbouring countries.
“This is not just Sunni extremism,” points out Geneive Abdoof the Stimson Center’s Middle East Program. “There is a methodical displacement of people. But the Shiite militias in Iraq have displaced Sunnis and the persecution of Christians is not just by the Sunni side. Ultimately this will change the complexion of the region.”
In Syria, where an Alawite, Shiitelinked minority has ruled a Sunni majority for decades, millions of Sunnis fled massive and indiscriminate killings by the regime of Bashar Assad.
They also fled from advancing Islamist militias, including the selfstyled Islamic State, which imposed its own murderous regime on a territory from eastern Syria into Iraq, declaring it an independent caliphate.
Assad’s hold on power has slipped, in spite of vigorous support from allies Russia and Iran.
It is almost certain that he cannot continue to rule the country, or that it will be the same Syria that survived for more than half a century after colonial powers left the region.
“I don’t believe that Syria will continue to exist,” says Philippe Fargues, a French demographer and co- founder of the Migration Policy Centre, who spent 25 years in the Middle East. “That is the big question now.”
Once-unthinkable partitions and land swaps of Shiite-allied Alawite and Sunni-populated territory are now spoken aloud by fighting groups and politicians. For most of the displaced Syrians, land lost is lost land.
With front lines increasingly fluid, Assad now controls a fraction of the country — mainly Damascus and parts of the Mediterranean coast. Backed by Russian bombing, he is fighting a pitched battle to retain Aleppo in the north and Deraa in eastern Syria, as well as launching new attacks on the central towns of Homs and Hama.
Islamic State has taken territory through central Syria and into Iraq, and other Islamist rebels have enlarged their footprint in the northwest.
The Kurds, meanwhile have made gains in the northeast, with the help of U.S. air strikes, including the crucial enclave of Kobani near the Turkish border.
In this deadly melee, says Landis, Western plans to undermine Assad could backfire. With Russia’s entrance into the conflict, the possibility of creating a no-fly zone in the south appears to be on hold.
That territory, says Landis, is the home of about 200,000 Druze, who are currently protected by Assad, but at risk of attacks by Islamic State, which vows to kill them as apostates, and enslave their women. “If Assad goes, will we protect them?” he asks.
Washington’s belief that Assad’s ouster is the first step to ending extremism — and the war — may be wrongheaded, Landis adds. “The alternative view is that extremism spreads because you’ve weakened and destroyed the state.”
In Iraq, Islamic State has devastated population centres and forced many to flee north to Iraqi Kurdistan, including the shrinking minorities of Iraq and Syria.
“When the Islamic State took over Mosul, about one-third of the population ran for their lives,” says Michael Izady, a U.S.-based demographer who has mapped centuries of Middle Eastern transitions.
“Nearly all were Kurds, Christians, Yazidis, Shia Arabs, Turkmen and others. The only ones left were Sunnis who thought that Islamic State had come to liberate them. They jumped from the frying pan into the fire.”
As population shifts continue, Iraq and Syria are becoming monocultural Sunni and Shiite domains, increasingly purged of minorities who had formerly gained power or found uneasy accommodation with the old dictatorships.
“The real problem now is that everyone has his own map,” says Izady. “Each group looks at the region and sees a different map.”
Integrated cities as well as countries in the volatile region are becoming things of the past, says Tadros.
“What we will be seeing are much sharper divisions, and the biggest losers will be the minorities who have no regional powers backing them. The borders between communities will be borders of blood.”