Children swim in the trunk of a car while cooling themselves amid a heat wave in Al-Tah refugee camp near the city of Idlib, Syria, on July 18, 2023. (PHOTO / AP)
The United States’ role in the Middle East refugee crisis – especially the plight of displaced Syrians – remains a hot topic after affected countries slammed the sanctions imposed by Washington.
While sanctions were put in place to cripple government officials, analysts said, they have been “silent killers” that have brought pain to innocent civilians.
Khaled Almasri, a former dean of the Faculty of International Relations and
Diplomacy at Al-Sham Private University (ASPU) in Syria’s capital Damascus, told China Daily that the logic behind the sanctions “was to make people suffer so they could rise against their governments”.
Iraq, Iran, and Syria show that governments did not suffer but ordinary people had to live with pain, Almasri said. “Sanctions did not change the behavior of targeted states,” he added, calling sanctions a “silent killer” and “one of the worst tools of statecraft”.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, said the Syrian displacement threatened Lebanon and urged the revocation of the Caesar Act to save Lebanon, which has struggled to elect a president and reverse its economic troubles for years
“Everybody knows that sanctions do not work,” said Almasri, adding that corruption and bad economic policies in the targeted states were also a problem.
In a speech on Oct 2, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, said Washington was responsible for the decade-long Syrian war and economic crisis because of its so-called war on terror.
He blamed the US for the first wave of Syrian displacements, exacerbated by the Caesar Act, passed in June 2020, sanctioning Syria’s government for alleged war crimes.
Nasrallah also said the Syrian displacement threatened Lebanon and urged the revocation of the Caesar Act to save Lebanon, which has struggled to elect a president and reverse its economic troubles for years.
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“There’s a refugee crisis now and (millions) still live in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkiye. That means these countries spent money for refugees and these refugees are now involved in the economic situation in Turkiye and other regional countries,” Deniz Istikbal, an economics researcher at the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, a think tank based in Ankara, Turkiye, told China Daily.
Middle Eastern media reported in July that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country was planning to ensure the return of about 1 million Syrian refugees back to their home country and that so far, 600,000 displaced people have returned.
US soldiers in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV) patrol the countryside of al-Malikiya town (Derik in Kurdish) in Syria's northeastern Hasakah province July 17, 2023. (PHOTO / AFP)
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of refugees worldwide increased from 27.1 million in 2021 to 35.3 million at the end of 2022, the largest yearly increase ever recorded, according to their statistics on forced displacement.
“The increase was largely due to refugees from Ukraine fleeing the international armed conflict in their country. Overall, 52 percent of all refugees and other people in need of international protection came from just three countries: the Syrian Arab Republic (6.5 million), Ukraine (5.7 million), and Afghanistan (5.7 million),” the UNHCR website said.
There’s a refugee crisis now and (millions) still live in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkiye. That means these countries spent money for refugees and these refugees are now involved in the economic situation in Turkiye and other regional countries.
Deniz Istikbal, an economics researcher at the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, a think tank based in Ankara, Turkiye
It also noted that Turkiye is “home to the world’s largest refugee population”, with almost 3.6 million Syrians under temporary protection and close to 370,000 refugees and asylum-seekers from elsewhere.
Jordan's King Abdullah II at the recent UN General Assembly urged the international community to do more to support refugees in his country, as Jordan has exceeded its capacity to accommodate nearly 1.4 million Syrian refugees.
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Syria has been in civil war since the Arab Spring outbreak in 2011. This led to its isolation from its neighbors after President Bashar Al-Assad’s government cracked down on demonstrations.
Syria was reinstated into the Arab League in May but talks for a permanent solution to the crisis remain fragile as it is also enmeshed in proxy wars involving Russia, Turkiye, the US, and opposition groups.
Jawaid Iqbal, chairman of the Department of West Asian and North African Studies at Aligarh Muslim University in India, told China Daily that the US has deployed nearly a thousand military personnel to Syria, “in breach of international law and Syrian sovereignty”.
In 2023, he noted, the US conducted multiple airstrikes against Syrian government targets. US military support and cooperation also “ensured the persistence of the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen”, Iqbal said.
According to the US Department of Defense, as of June 2023, it had 30,000 troops across the Middle East. This shows the US “commitment to the Middle East hasn't changed” despite its significant drawdown in Iraq and withdrawal from Afghanistan in Central Asia, Dana Stroul is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for the Middle East, was quoted as saying in a Jerusalem Post interview.
In an interview with Xinhua, Bouthaina Shaaban, special advisor to the Syrian presidenct, spoke of the presence of US troops on Syrian soil.
Shaaban denounced it as an occupation, affirming the Syrian people's resolve to fight for the liberation of their land through legitimate means.
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“The US will not ease sanctions before it gets something in return. I do not think there is an opportunity to lift the sanctions imposed on Syria soon but on the contrary, USA will tighten the sanctions more in the near future,” said Almasri from ASPU.
