More than 20 years ago, Robert Kaplan painted a picture of a descending anarchy threatening to engulf parts of West Africa with global consequences. Ethnic, tribal and identity grievances reinforced by environmental disaster , economic despair and the collapse of states served to reinforce such kinds of predictions that the future was bleak. At the time, and now, we face the fallout of such human security catastrophes with millions moving across borders legally and illegally, drug wars and large criminal networks that feed from and create these anarchic conditions, leading to cycles of violence and human insecurity. The future seems exceptionally bleak from this perspective. Progress, positive social and economic change and the betterment of humanity seemed illusions in this retrospective light. This book is concerned with similar problems that Kaplan described over twenty years ago. We will discuss the human security implications of the migration and refugee crisis caused by wars and disasters that have recently engulfed the Middle East, North Africa and beyond and which have threatened to overwhelm receiving states and have led to xenophobia and human rights violations. The vulnerability of people on the move fleeing war and disaster is also in part met by the difficulties faced by states receiving migrants and refugees. In the absence of a real global system of rights and protection for refugees and migrants, a form of chaos and anarchy ensues. This is a situation into which peoples’ lives are thrown from any sense of human security to a position of vulnerability and unpredictability.
Context
Since the Arab uprisings of 2010/2011, the Middle East and North African region (MENA ) has continually been the focus of media and scholarly attention over these, and the conflicts that have emerged and engulfed the region, often called the Arab Spring , and seen initially as a social transformation on a revolutionary scale. The widespread political and social change prompting civil war in some cases has brought about some major and minor transformations at all levels and most significantly a series of humanitarian crises that are staggering in nature, depth and the effect they have had on vulnerable populations. The uprisings in their initial stages saw major political and social changes and called into question the national state order in the region, with the development of new social movements and groups opposed to the old order. This old order has proved much more resilient to real change, however, than appeared to be the case in the initial stages. Moreover, any real hopes for a peaceful democratization which would prove inclusive and beneficial to populations here have failed to materialize in a significant way. Rather conflict, stagnation and despair have seen spring turn to winter and the failure of initial hopes, aspirations and dreams for a better future. Into this nexus have flowed all sorts of conflicting problems. For instance, the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as an anti-systemic force using terrorism has strengthened this reality of chaos and conflict, while resurfacing Kurdish nationalism and escalating sectarian conflicts have added momentum to the fragmentation and re-composition (decomposition) of the regional order. Displaced populations and migrants contribute to reshuffle previously configured polities and communities. States like Syria and Iraq appear as failed states unable to control their borders or the populations moving across them. Chaos and conflict appear to be the best descriptors for the problems here. Conflict between the Gulf states, usually seen as harmonious in nature, has developed as Saudi Arabia and the UAE have turned on Qatar claiming it is influenced and controlled by Iran (the common Sunni enemy) and that Qatar funds terrorism and turmoil in the region for its own ends. Meanwhile, a civil war continues to rage in Yemen with tribal and ethnic animosities fuelled in a proxy war conducted between Iran and Saudi Arabia who have increased the rhetoric and who must also take responsibility for the conflict. The Gulf region appears fractured along religious, ethnic and tribal lines.
Perhaps the most dramatic outcome of conflict in countries like Syria , Iraq and elsewhere has been the massive movement of people who are displaced internally and externally, a combination of people seeking to flee their situation for fear of political persecution (refugees) and migrants who seek a better economic life in a safer country. For many, the lines between these have become blurry and unfocused, resulting in resentment and xenophobia in countries where the victims of such conflicts end up.
It is hard to dismiss the shocking images of and outrage over a dead Syrian toddler washed up on the shores of the Mediterranean . Alan Kurdi was a three-year-old boy from Syria whose background was ethnic Kurdish and whose images made global new headlines when he drowned on the 2 September 2015 in the Mediterranean , another victim of the refugee crisis but one that evoked anger, outrage and sympathy all around the world. The victim’s family were trying to reach Canada in the hope of a better life, an effort which ended in tragedy. Combined with the scale of the crisis, these issues became prominent in the Canadian general election in 2015 and resulted in part in Canada declaring a more open-door policy towards refugees and their humane treatment. The destruction of Syria , the war in Iraq and the collapse of Libya are all contributing factors to what has become the world’s worst human displacement crisis on record and were a major part of the backdrop to the push factors causing people to take desperate measures to leave their countries. Extreme political violence in the MENA region was and is pushing families into harrowing journeys, taking their toll on lives and stretching countries resources to breaking point in the hope these vulnerable individuals and families can escape the hell they are living in.
Syria and Iraq are Arabian nightmares at the local, the regional and global levels in terms of human security and the protection of the vulnerable. Wracked by civil war, ethnic and political violence in the last 6 years in the case of Syria and 15 years in the case of Iraq, the body count now is staggering; the humanitarian crisis continues and there appears no end to these seemingly intractable conflicts. This is a crisis that has claimed the lives of over 500,000 people so far in Syria , sparked a humanitarian catastrophe, fuelled violent Islamic extremism and exposed serious splits in the international community who appear to have no consensus. The international community’s failure to act is simply another sign of the desperate situation which has developed over conflicts that appear unsolvable in the immediate future and may be intractable in the long range.
The responsibility to protect the tens of millions of human beings fleeing real terror requires a radical humanitarian response. Since 2013, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees has documented a fourfold increase in refugees. The dramatic rise is due directly to the conflict in Syria and has resulted in record numbers of asylum seekers arriving at the borders of Europe. But this is not a European problem; rather, it is human crisis that must be dealt with through a global response.
These changes since 2011 ensured that migration issues remained in the spotlight. New regimes in Egypt , Libya and Tunisia , and increasing conflict in Iraq and Syria have focused these challenges in perspective. Humanitarian problems have been exacerbated regarding displaced people. In Syria for instance after 5 years of conflict, Mercy Corps in 2015 has estimated that more than 7.6 million people are internally displaced within Syria ’s borders and over 4 million have been forced to flee the country. Many of these people most acutely affected are women and children, and other vulnerable groups including migrant workers and refugees, living in a state of insecurity.
Moreover, the spillover effects have been no less dramatic. Over 1.7 million Syrians, nearly half children, are displaced within their neighbours including those who have taken refuge in the five neighbouring countries of Egypt , Iraq, Jordan , Lebanon and Turkey . The demands on these countries capacities to absorb, many of who are undergoing their own crises, have created fundamental challenges to human security . The levels of conflict, instability, coupled with high rates of unemployment and underemployment, particularly among young people have also helped to push people towards irregular migration, in the region and on a global scale.
Europe and Migration
The crisis importantly has also had a major impact on Western Europe and prompted a real political and economic problem for European union member states. Migration, also known as human mobility, is an essential component of globalization . As nations have opened their economies and societies to trade and investment, human mobility has become a key feature in global integration.
Europe, due to its geographical proximity, safety and economic stability, is a favoured migration destination for communities from Africa and the Middle East. The migration to Europe over the past two decades has been classified as a mixed migration, which is a categorization that defines the complex population movements that include economic migrants...