Q: Why, during the Vietnam war, we did not see millions of refugees leaving South Vietnam and going to the North, even though the South and the North are parts of the same country?
Yet we see over five million Syrians escaping to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan and dying from the cold and hunger in refugee camps.
A: In Vietnam you had a competent leadership and party that organized and directed the fight against the occupier and its local South Vietnamese puppet. It realized that the fight was in the South, and instead of millions of refugees streaming North, the fighters streamed South.
In Syria you do not have a unified, independent, competent and credible leadership. This made the ordinary Syrians respond to the calls and the whims of regional and international powers who made them evacuate thinking that they would return in a few months. This is so reminiscent of the Palestinian refugees during the Nakba.
Turkey helped create that illusion by promising far more than it could deliver. Now the poor civilian refugees are paying the price.
What will it take for the Syrians to form their own, independent, competent and tough-minded leadership??
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