It is Europe's fault. As clear as crystal, it is our fault. When Africa and the Middle East were decolonised back in the post-war period, many previous occupiers just upped sticks and moved back to their capitals, leaving those behind to fend for themselves. They did not leave sufficient depth in the remnant institutions for those countries to maintain the relative peace and unity of the colonial days. Let us be honest here, what I mean is people did not fight each other under occupation as they had their foreign lords and masters as a common enemy. British colonies faired the best, with the majority of them being bequeathed the institutions and laws which have turned them into fairly successful countries in their own ways (barring a few abysmal failures), but it does not mean at all that they are exonerated. Most colonisers more or less lowered their flags, played the bugle and scuttled off home again, the only real leftovers being the languages inherited from their previous overseers.
The West's guilt
What these powers also did was divide up the Middle East and Africa in such a way that there were no real ethnic or religious boundaries, and for a reason: the French and British were worried about Arab unity. If the Arabs were able to unite under only a few leaders, they might become powerful and ultimately dangerous to European dominance. Look at India today. The Sykes-Picot deal made the area so unrealistically divided, bringing in kings, sheiks, presidents and dictators to rule the area, often being replaced when they had outrun their use, that it would keep them busily at each other's throats for decades to come. They needn't have worried so much - sectarian skirmishes and various long-lived grudges didn't take long to appear. And so the plan worked enormously well. Even when the region tried to unite under the umbrella of the United Arab Republic, a kind of EU-prototype conjoining of Ba'athist regional powers Syria and Egypt, it did not last long when one of the two member states underwent a coup d'état. Iraq was also hoping to join this group, and if it had, the momentum may have swung other regional powers behind the union, so chances are high the Syrian coup d'état was the brainchild of someone sitting uneasily in the Elysée Palace or Number 10, who did not want a successful Arab bloc at the end of the Mediterranean.
So it was all going to plan for the former colonial powers until the 1980s, when dictators like Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi started to get too big for their boots, wanting more firepower and weaponry to inflict the latest atrocity on their huddled masses and threatening the West with all sorts of vengeful actions. The Lockerbie disaster and the invasion of Kuwait were two of those actions. I remember, during the retaking of Kuwait by the West and the Allies' subsequent march into Iraq, they didn't finish the job off. They didn't remove Saddam from power. That may be because American intelligence under Bush Senior knew that Saddam Hussein was still the right man for the job in Iraq. He was holding the various loose pieces of fabric together and keeping a firm lid on any uprisings. This was perhaps the smartest move of the last hundred years. The smartest move of a lot of very reckless ones, but a smart one nonetheless.
The most reckless action of the last thousand years (or more) took place on the watch of America's most undeserving president, George W. Bush, and Britain's messianic Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, and in the aftermath of the semi-apocalyptic destruction of two towers in New York by an extraordinarily wily and ostentatiously rich Arab psychopath with a bone to pick, these two decided to send in the heavies to "clear up" the Middle East. Now... although a lot of us were fooled by the idea that Saddam was an awful dictator who needed removing before he murdered all the minorities, we did not expect that Bush and Blair would totally fudge the entire change of regime. If they really wanted to bring in democracy, they had to realise what they were letting go of. Decades of relative calm held in place by the threat of brutal retaliation by the leader, the sectarian powder keg that was Mesopotamia was firmly sealed by Saddam Hussein, and his removal was going to open it all up.
Reasons for leaving
And it did. But not only that, it brought out all the other dissatisfied wretches and rejects from every other part of the world. It gave the Jihadis a place to really get their act together and begin the reconquering of the world. The Jihadis of Islamic State are not there to just retake what territory they lost, they are there to humiliate and ultimately bring down the governments of the West. And where better to start than right on their doorsteps? The twisted ideology, self-publicity and money-raising capabilities of these warmongers are nothing short of genial. Recruiting the frustrated, the lonely, the talented oddballs, the pious and the rejected, they tell their targets about the wonderful life they could have in the new Islamic State. They tell about the feeling of superiority these outcasts will have, and the responsibilities they will be given.
Imagine being given the power of life and death over whole towns. Imagine a country like Syria, which despite the brutal dictator, had a pretty good quality of life and a high standard of education, falling apart due to sponsored destabilisation by rich madmen and other regional rivals, and then taken over by the worst kind of warrior. Let us not forget, despite the atrocities carried out by the previous regimes in Iraq, Syria and Libya and all the other dictatorships in the region, if not the world, most people still stayed in the area, even if it was under threat of gassing or midnight removals. Nothing as brutal, savage and inhuman as Islamic State ever happened under the other dictators that caused such mass panic and the fleeing of hundreds of thousands of people to Europe. Imagine, having been a well-to-do middle-class Syrian five years ago, being told your mother has been tortured, your wife abducted, your daughter gang-raped and your son executed. Imagine being the neighbour of that family, as yet unscathed. Wouldn't you pack up and get out of there as quickly as you could? Wouldn't you, right now, be either on a Greek island, at Keleti railway station in Budapest, or scrambling over the Austrian border on your way to a place where you would be given a bed, some food and a new life?
What is worse, we in the West sold the previous incumbents the hardware to be able to carry out these crimes on their people - or at least we sold the hardware to the side our governments supported at the time. Not only the West - Russia and China are most probably in it up to their midriffs too. So when the little guys started fighting back, our governments chose a side and supplied more weapons to them. It was not uncommon for them to change sides, depending what they could get out of it all - fuel, minerals, lucrative contracts - nothing was governed by principles of fairness or justice. The Taliban was, at one time, an ally. There are many reasons why we in the West are now reaping what we sowed, and this is the final repayment of the Karma debt: what we failed to do back then to alleviate their transition to independence and the subsequent brutalities which led to the necessary intervention of the West (again) have led us so far that we have unwittingly created the diabolical cults of Jihadism and Islamist violence. This is the result of our short-termism and complacency.
Blood on our hands
And this has been the case from Eritrea to Erbil, Somalia to San'a, Palestine to Peshawar and Casablanca to Kandahar. We are guilty of great human suffering, even if by proxy, even if 50 years may have passed since we lowered our flags. What we should have done at the end of our empires was to integrate those countries into the world economy by setting up trade talks with international organisations. We should have split the countries up more logically rather than flippantly drawing ridiculous borders after liquid lunches which ended up with names like Winston's Hiccup. We should have let them form their own alliances and not stepped in when things got a little tricky. If we wanted to keep them busy, we should have made it clear from the start that we wanted to be their commercial sponsors and patrons and given them skills and trades. We should not have just let them get angry about everything. And don't get me started on Israel. Good idea in theory, but in practice, we should have been more insistent about Palestine and guarding the inhabitants who were already there. And the playing of the anti-Semitism card, getting easily offended by sometimes very trivial things like the recent palaver over the water showers at Auschwitz every time something does not go their way is wearing very thin.
So all these power-flaunting irritations of varying sizes have morphed into a giant middle finger to the Arab world. And in turn, as we have the stability and the power, we are both their enemy and their role model. Their bully and their refuge. Their bomber and their saviour. It is a strange situation to be in. And right now, having invaded Libya on a whim, having deposed Saddam in a little over a fortnight, having spent years in Afghanistan, having overpowered so many brutal dictators, we get cold feet at the very moment when we actually should do something about it. We are creating haters here in Europe due to our lack of a clear strategy and making it seem like our governments don't care. But there is a clear strategy: Russia is a very powerful player in Assad's Syria. The Russians have a fleet based on the Syrian coast courtesy of Assad. Recent pictures show that area to be totally at ease and peaceful. I am quite sure the West had been waiting for IS to overrun Assad all the way to the coast, therefore forcing Russia out of the picture, before stepping in, but now that looks unlikely. So there have been rumblings in France and Britain about sending in more military firepower. The West's distaste in confronting Russia is at least a sign it has thought about a strategy, even though it seems very likely Assad is now entrenched. The optimistic, dare I say unrealistic, plan to force Assad out through a six-month "transition period" is post-colonialist daydreaming, to say the least.
Misleading facts and figures
This is the fact about the Syrian refugee crisis: there were about 20 million people living in Syria before the troubles. Over half of them, about 12 million, have in some form or another been displaced. The vast majority of those, about 8 million, have fled to safer parts of Syria and about 4 million to neighbouring countries like Lebanon and Jordan. Only 250,000 have tried to get into the EU, but more are coming all the time. There are also great numbers of people coming from Afghanistan, Eritrea and Sub-Saharan Africa. The number of people displaced is an appalling humanitarian catastrophe and a very dark period in our history. The total number of people trying to reach European shores is unknown, but they are coming for a reason.
And here is where we need to take an honest step back: not everyone coming to Europe is doing it because their lives are threatened. Many are coming for economic purposes. There are also a number of rumours that are sweeping conspiracy theorist websites everywhere: that there are lots of Jihadists in amongst them, especially since IS warned they would send hundreds of thousands of "soldiers" to Europe back in February. The theories are not stupid and it is not wrong to be worried about this being the case. It is entirely feasible. Think about it: if the price of transport to Kos, Pantelleria or Sicily costs between one year's salary and five years' salary for one of those refugees, imagine how much a family would have to pay to get across the sea. Who is paying for them? The theory goes that some rich Sheiks are paying the traffickers to send hundreds of thousands of Muslims to Europe to dilute the secular population and flood Europe with Muslims. Again, another plausible theory, but not one I have yet chosen to believe.
Right-wing threat
What seems to be threatening to occur now, unless more people are mobilised to intervene and prevent civil unrest, is the following: the Hungarians and the British, with their fence-building and detaining of refugees at Röszke and Calais for no good reason, are no better than each other, and are giving Europe a bad name amongst those fleeing violence. Intimidation, corralling, delaying the process of registration and integration, these are all making new enemies of Europe. Showing pictures of rubbish strewn on footpaths as if it's something new; people rushing police; people being tripped up in order to get a shot of an angry Arab; these all add to the fuel of hatred being spewed by Europe's many right-wing leaders, like Nigel Farage, Filip de Winter, Marine Le Pen, and Viktor Orban. If we don't properly welcome these moderate, fairly secular Syrians arriving at our frontiers, we risk embittering already desperate people who just want peace.
Furthermore, we seem to have let the right-wing media and politicians tell us these people are just troublemakers in disguise. I have a different theory. These are very, very different people indeed. I know lots of north Africans and Middle-Eastern people from my time living in Belgium. I also know many from when I was in London. They fall mainly into two categories: very well brought up, courteous, thankful, respectful, fully integrated and well-grounded (often much more so than their autochthonous European counterparts); or frustrated, lonely, badly-integrated, vulnerable, impressionable and looking around for a friend. And it is these people who need saving. It is indeed these people that I can relate to and identify, because a similar thing happened to me, although not in a religious context, I hasten to add. If I had been promised friendship, camaraderie and support, I would have given the same back. If I had been told angry stories of mistreatment and insult, I would maybe have wanted revenge for my new friends. It is a very easy hole to fall into, and understanding that these new arrivals are more like us on a human level than we have been led to believe is one thing that scares the right-wing media. So what we need to do is welcome these people immediately, and fast-track them into work and an autonomous life so that they feel part of us as soon as possible. They are, after all, smartphone-using, mostly well-educated, well-behaved people who, like their counterparts of 70 years ago, are looking to escape persecution.
There is hope
And that seems to be happening. Angela Merkel, at least, has played a significant role in alleviating the impact of so many arrivals by firstly spreading the word that people must be tolerant, helpful and welcoming, causing the refugees to make Germany their top destination. And this is currently the case. It is gratifying to see that the German government is making a real effort and taking the lead in showing respect, trust, and a level of humanity these arrivals have not experienced. Many of these people will never go home again. But once the war is over and the cancer of terrorism has been purged, some may choose to return to their ancestral lands. But first, it is necessary to clear the place up.
How? How do you deal with the embodiment of evil that is Islamic State, and how do you persuade people to return to places that have seen such grotesque acts of barbarity and especially to move back into properties that were usurped by other people in the meantime? There is a precedent for this, and that is the Second World War. All sorts of people who were displaced by it, whether Poles, Jews, Belgians, Russians or Germans, the bombs rained down, the mass executions took place, the persecutions carried on, the atrocities widespread. There are still scars of history in places that will forever keep their air of sadness: Auschwitz, Theresienstadt, parts of Warsaw, Bergen-Belsen, Katyn or Dresden in the Second World War are some of those places. In more recent times we can look to Srebrenica, Kigali or the World Trade Centre. All have been places of the most atrocious of crimes, resulting in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and despite the abominations that took place there, people have still returned, even if many wounds have yet to heal.
I do believe that once the Jihadis of Islamic State and other nefarious organisations have been eradicated, people will once again return to their lands. Not all, but many. In the meantime, the West had better start dropping its proclivities of setting up puppet democracies and learn to tolerate the relative safety and calm brought about by strong dictators. It had also better give the various ethnic groups the chance to run their own lands, not least the Kurds. The Turks will protest long and hard, but the Kurds need to be treated as equals. Once all of these things have been achieved, it is time the West grew up and left that area to deal with itself.
