The determination of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) at settling the Syrian refugees permanently in Lebanon is driven by only one concern: To prevent those refugees now on Lebanese soil from migrating to Europe and the West in general. In other words, to keep the refugee burden concentrated inside an exhausted Lebanese economy, instead of it becoming a burden on the Europeans and the West. The interest of the UN and the international community in the refugees is not out of humanitarian concern, but is a political ploy to prevent those refugees from reaching western shores.
But 65% of the Syrians in Lebanon are not even refugees. The UNHCR has a list of registered Syrian refugees who number around 1 million. But all other indicators and official census numbers show that there is an estimated 2.5 million Syrians inside Lebanon, on top of a 4 million native Lebanese population. Which means that more than 1.5 million Syrians are illegal migrants present on Lebanese soil and hide under the label of refugees to carry out illegal activities, including theft of public installations (electric wires, iron poles and manholes, AC compressors, etc. anything that can be sold for profit) and all manner of crimes (drug smuggling, killings, rapes, home invasions, etc. ) that burden the Lebanese economy to the point of a meltdown. These 1.5 million Syrians are economic migrants and not refugees: they freely and daily cross the border between
Lebanon and Syria in both directions and engage in all manner of lucrative smuggling that
is extremely harmful to the Lebanese economy. Together, the 2.5 million Syrian refugees and migrants deplete the Lebanese infrastructure and deprive the Lebanese themselves of the little available services and opportunities such as electricity, water, schooling, medical care, and jobs.
In a gross and blatant violation of the rules, the UNHCR refuses to share its list of registered Syrian refugees with the Lebanese government because the UNHCR knows that Lebanon will then have legal standing to deport those Syrians illegally present inside Lebanon. Yet, the UN and behind it the international community insist on denying the Lebanese government any interference in their management of the migrant-refugee crisis. All of this while western countries are bending over backward to deny refugees entry and residence: fences, walls on borders, aggressive policing, turning back refugee boats, deporting refugees back to their home countries and even to paid third-party countries like Rwanda. What tiny Lebanon is asked to bear would be unthinkable for any of the large and economically affluent European countries.
The cost of maintaining the 2.5 million Syrians refugees inside Lebanon is at the rate of $5 billion a year, most of it paid by the countries that refuse to take refugees themselves. In other words, these countries are paying to keep the refugees in Lebanon.
We saw what happened with the UNRWA - more than 70 years after the criminal insertion of the British-American colony of Israel in the Near East, the Palestinian refugees driven from their homes, villages, towns and cities languish in destitute refugee camps and have not been allowed to return home. Yet, under any moral standard, it should be the highest of priorities to ensure that refugees, driven out of their native lands by barbaric regimes and wars, return home. Instead, in a feeding frenzy of hungry hounds, international aid organizations jump into action for the stated objective of keeping the refugees in the status of refugees as long as they can, because this ensures decades of funding and job security for the aid organizations themselves. This exploitation of a catastrophic situation for personal gain is an act of ultimate cruelty. No consideration is given to any other factor: Existential threat to the host country, catastrophic demographic changes, preference of the refugees to return home, economic burden on host countries, etc. The saga of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, displaced by the barbaric creation of a racist and colonial Israel, provides ample proof of the catastrophes that refugees can bring to their host countries, while no accountability whatsoever is required of the country driving people out of their homes.
Westerners view refugees like their pet domestic animals in a strange Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy. This view is not unlike that of a condescending west believing that certain third-world societies are intrinsically and genetically incapable of adopting democracy or choosing their own path. The "superior" West infantilizes the refugees and refuses them the right to make their own decisions without a suffocating "mother" to care for them.
In the Western concept of a pet, the animal is denied freedom and self-determination, is kept essentially jailed by the owner, and is fed just enough to maintain it in a state where it can be permanently enslaved and exploited for the personal amusement of the owner. Human refugees are herded by international aid organizations (many of which are fronts for local corrupt entities) into filthy degrading camps, they are minimally fed and are encouraged to have dozens of children so the aid organizations, often affiliated with religious corporations like the Catholic Church that prohibit birth control, increase the numbers of their dependent followers, thus ensuring the long-term survival of the organizations while perpetuating the misery of the refugees. They are like a physician who, knowing that he may run out of sick people, does his best to keep people sick and therefore in need of his care.
The international community has been through a similar pattern of behavior in the war against poverty and hunger around the world. For many decades after World War II, the international community and aid organizations delivered tons and tons of food to those in need, those displaced by war, drought, and violent weather. It took one generation for the aid donors to realize that just dumping food in often haphazard ways and through corrupt mechanisms wasn't enough to solve the basic problem. So the formula was changed from "feeding people" to "helping people feed themselves" with specific development programs.
That same approach should become the operational strategy concerning refugees. Rather than keeping them herded in overcrowded refugee camps in increasingly resentful host countries as is the case today, international organizations should raise the standard of their objectives: The humanitarian aspect should no longer be artificially divorced from the political aspect. Very often, the donor countries are the ones instigating or indirectly fomenting the instability and wars that ultimately drive the residents of a country into refugee status. Instead of squandering money and resources, and providing job security to hundreds of thousands of parasitic aid workers feeding off the misery of other people, the international community should couple humanitarian aid with political and military pressure on the refugees' home country.
A country like Syria, led for more than five decades by a vulgar and barbaric regime that has colluded and benefited immensely from the international community's begnin approach, should not only be subjected to useless sanctions that drive more refugees out but never hurt the regime itself, but should be immediately slapped by a slew of harsh and instantaneous measures that must include a military dimension. Many UN treaties and charters leave open the possibility of using military action by UN member states. Why should such an approach not be deemed acceptable when millions of people are forcibly driven out of their native lands by cruel and barbaric regime?
Actions destined to immediately transform the offending country into a pariah state:
- Reduce the pay of those employed in humanitarian aid organizations to the bare minimum. Aid organizations should become mostly volunteer-based groups. Reduce the financial incentives that attract people and associations with dubious intentions.
- Deprive the offending country of the attributes of sovereignty which should no longer be used as a pretext to evade sanctions.
- Impose a full-fledged embargo and boycott of the guilty country's ports of entry.
- Seize all the offending country's overseas assets, including accounts and externally-managed sovereign funds.
- Deny trade, banking, commercial and cultural exchanges with the offending country. Intercept and interdict ships in and out of the offending country.
- Seize all the country's natural resources or prohibit or interdict their use in order to starve the offending country.
- Adopt an immediate and clear threat of utilizing military action to create safe zones inside the offending country's territory where the refugees are re-settled and protected.
- Evict the offending country from the UN and other international associations such as UNESCO and others.
- Close all diplomatic missions, cultural centers and associated services in the offending country.
- Penalize the offending country's citizens who cooperate and contribute directly or indirectly to the flight of the refugees.
Why is military action deemed reasonable by the UN Security Council against countries that invade other countries, but not against countries that drive their own people out (Sudan, Syria, Burma...)? By what measure of ethical standards has the humanitarian consideration taken second rank behind the political consideration?
The humanitarian activities of the UN should no longer be the poor parent of political activities. In 1945 when the UN was founded the focus was on ensuring peace, with military means if necessary, around the globe. That has failed because the military means was never seriously invested in finding a resolution to whatever crisis the world faced. The UN's humanitarian concerns have since lacked the backbone of the threat of military retribution, and have become the laughing stock of a majority of the world's countries. Many countries, Lebanon and Syria included, humor the UN agencies with fake expressions of solidarity and take the UN for a fool to get some money out of it. How many charters have such countries signed but have never implemented their provisions?
The UN's humanitarian missions feed both the refugees and those who provide for them. They never solve the problem; instead, they perpetuate the situation they intended to correct. Unless the humanitarian implications are coupled from the start of the crisis with the political aspects, the UN and aid organizations will remain engaged in a pointless and treacherous pattern of squandering resources without resolving the problem. There has never been a single victory associated with the original intentions of establishing the UN. The UN was intended to be a muscled version of the League of Nations. But Palestine, Korea, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, etc. have all proven that the UN is as much a failure as its predecessor.
I call on the Lebanese people to boycott the UN and the UNHCR. Demonstrate to them that they are undesirable and a clear and present danger to Lebanon, one of the UN's founding states and co-author of its human rights charter.
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