TAKE HEART ALEPPO....... HERE COMES QATAR TO THE RESCUE...... IT HAS ASKED FOR AN EMERGENCY MEETING OF .......(drum roll please)...... THE ARAB LEAGUE!!! MAN, THIS IS A DECISIVE STEP THAT WILL STOP ASSAD AND RUSSIA IN THEIR TRACKS!
يزوّدون شاحنة الاستبداد بالوقود في القاهرة، فتنطلق مثيلتها بالسرعة الإجرامية القصوى في دمشق.
كل دعم يحصل عليه نظام عبد الفتاح السيسي في مصر ينعش نظام بشار الأسد في سورية.. تلك هي المعادلة التي أثبتت صحتها وقائع الأيام.
لم يرد بشار أن يفوِّت فرصة ازدحام مطار القاهرة بطائرات داعمي الانقلابات، فالتقط الرسالة سريعاً، وقرر ذبح حلب مرة أخرى، وإقامة حفل شواء، "باربيكيو"، للحوم الأطفال والعجائز في المستشفيات وفي المدارس والملاجئ، تزامناً مع حفل الطرب الملكي
في قصر عابدين في القاهرة.
يعلم بشار أن الرعاة يعلمون، في قرارة أنفسهم، أنه والسيسي في سلة واحدة، وما يُلقى للثاني من مساعدات يفيد منها جزار الشام، وكما انتفخت أوداج السيسي بعد الزيارات السخية، فأطلق العنان لفرق الاستبداد والوحشية، فقد انتعش بشار وانتشى، بالقدر نفسه، وقرّر أن يمارس عمليات الإبادة ضد الشعب الثائر، بالطاقة القصوى، فافترس حلب، ثم استدار إلى الرقة مدعوماً بغطاء جوي من الطيران الروسي، وعملية إعادة انتشار برية لمقاتلي داعش الذين رصدتهم العدسات يتنقلون، منسحبين، من مناطقهم على الرحب والسعة، بينما يواصل طيران النظام غاراته المجنونة على المدنيين وقوات المعارضة الثورية.
وكما رصد متابعون سوريون من الميدان، فقد خرجت قوافل قوات داعش من ضواحي دمشق، ومن الضمير، بحماية برية من قوات النظام، فيما كانت تسير أمام قوافلهم سيارات ترفع علم الأمم المتحدة، وقطعت الطريق من دمشق إلى الرقة في 8 ساعات مكشوفة في صحراء منبسطة تحت أنظار الطائرات الأميركية والروسية وطائرات النظام، ثم يستخفون بعقولنا ويدّعون أنهم يحاربون داعش.
ينسف هذا المشهد كل الأكاذيب، ويسقط كل الادعاءات والأساطير التي يسوقونها لتبرير عربدتهم في الأراضي السورية بالحرب على "داعش"، ويؤكد أنهم [جميعاً كاذبون في قولهم إنهم مع الشعب السوري ضد بشار الأسد وداعش، فالصحيح أنهم، مع داعش وبشار، ضد الثورة السورية، وربيعنا العربي.] THIS IS A KEY STATEMENT
غضب مني بعض الأشقاء العرب، حين قلت يوماً إن قليلين جداً من اللاعبين في المأساة السورية يحبون الربيع العربي، فيما جلّهم كاره له، وإن استخدمه ورقةً في اللعبة الإقليمية أحياناً.. وهكذا، تتحول الثورات إلى مجرد ورقة في لعبة البوكر السياسي في المنطقة، بعناصرها الطائفية، والمذهبية، لتتحقق بوضوح نظرية الأواني المستطرقة. خذ في الشام، واترك في اليمن، والعكس أيضاً صحيح، فيما ينشط اللاعبون في تقديم كمياتٍ إضافيةٍ من مظاهر التعاطف مع الضحايا، مساحات لجوء، وحسابات تبرع، ليهنأ السفاحون بالاستمرار.
وها هي الأيام تنطق بأنهم "أكلة لحوم الثورات العربية"، كما وصفتهم سابقا، فكل صيحات الحرب، العربية والغربية، ضد بشار، انتهت إلى تثبيت أركان حكمه، ومنحته مساحاتٍ وقدراتٍ للحركة فوق جثة الثورة السورية، منذ أعلن باراك أوباما، عقب مجزرة الكيماوي في الغوطتين 2013، أن الضربة الأميركية خلال ساعات، وحتى الحديث عن قواتٍ عربية، بقيادةٍ سعودية، تستعد لدخول سورية، للحرب ضد تنظيم الدولة.
وأكرّر أن الثورة السورية تدفع من لحمها الحي ثمن ما يجري في اليمن، وفي مصر، وفي ليبيا. يسقط الحوثي وصالح، ليعيش بشار والسيسي، ينخفض سعر برميل النفط، لترتفع فرص بشار الأسد في البقاء. يعصرون عنب اليمن، كي يثمر بلح الشام، ويتساقط رطباً جنياً في حجر بوتين، ليتغذّى بشار، ويسمن إجرامه.
كلهم يتناوبون افتراس الثورة السورية، في فراشٍ داعشي وثير، ليصبح جل أصدقاء سورية أصدقاء روسيا البوتينية، في اللحظة نفسها، والوضع نفسه، ولا يبقى سوى أن تتحوّل المأساة السورية إلى صندوق تبرعات أمام مساجد، تدعو منابرها على بشار، وبوتين، وفي الوقت نفسه، تدعو بطول البقاء لأصدقاء الدب الروسي الألداء.
كلهم دواعش، وكلهم بوتين، وكلنا حلب وسيناء، يقطعون من لحمنا الحي، ويصنعون أطباقهم المفضّلة في مطابخ الحرب على الإرهاب.
Hundreds of supporters of the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr tear down Baghdad’s Green Zone barrier to force their way into parliament. Supporters of Sadr, whose fighters once controlled swaths of Baghdad and helped defend the capital from Islamic State, have been demonstrating for weeks to pressure the government to reform
The escalation follows months of protests, sit-ins and demonstrations outside the compound Link
Baghdad's heavily fortified 'Green Zone' is being evacuated following a rampage by thousands of protesters on Saturday after lawmakers failed again to reach a quorum and approve new cabinet ministers.
Several foreign missions in Baghdad's heavily fortified "Green Zone" are evacuating their employees as thousands of protesters stormed the restricted area on Saturday.
The rioters also rampaged through several parts of the parliament building, chanting "peacefully, peacefully".
According to The New Arab correspondent in Baghdad, a curfew was announced in several areas of the Iraqi capital, with the military requesting reinforcement from the south.
Meanwhile, US helicopters were spotted flying on low altitude over the US embassy in the Green Zone as protesters approached the premises, the correspondent added.
Sources told The New Arab that Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi was preparing to give a speech addressing the Iraqi people later today.
The escalation comes after lawmakers again failed to reach a quorum and approve new cabinet ministers to replace the current government of party-affiliated ministers.
The unrest kicked off minutes after cleric Moqtada al-Sadr wrapped a news conference in the holy Shia city of Najaf during which he condemned the political deadlock, but did not order supporters to enter the Green Zone.
The powerful Shia cleric accused Iraqi politicians of blocking efforts to implement political reform aimed at combating corruption and waste.
This escalation marks the first time protesters have breached the Green Zone after months of protests, sit-ins and demonstrations outside the compound.
Thousands of protesters broke into Baghdad's heavily fortified 'Green Zone' [The New Arab]
"You are not staying here! This is your last day in the Green Zone," shouted one protester as thousands broke into the area in central Baghdad that houses parliament, the presidential palace, the prime minister's office as well as the US and several other embassies.
Protesters attached cables to the tops of heavy concrete blast walls that surround the Green Zone, pulling them down to create an opening, television footage showed.
They also pulled barbed wire across a road leading to one of the exits of the Green Zone, effectively preventing some scared lawmakers from fleeing the chaos.
Several vehicles the protesters believed belonged to lawmakers were attacked and damaged.
Iraq has been hit by weeks of political turmoil surrounding Abadi's efforts to replace the cabinet of party-affiliated ministers with a government of technocrats.
Increasingly tense protests and a series of failed reform measures have paralysed Iraq's government as the country struggles to fight the Islamic State group and respond to an economic crisis sparked in part by a plunge in global oil prices.
Agencies contributed to this report
WHY ARE THESE TWO EUNUCHS DOING NOTHING WHILE ALEPPO BURNS?? ALL WE SEE AND HEAR ARE MEETINGS, SUMMITS AND EMPTY TALK! TFUH ON BOTH WHO ARE TOTALLY SUBSERVIENT TO UNCLE SAM.
Gaziantep, Turkey, April 28, 2016—Fourteen people, including at least two doctors, were killed Wednesday night in the bombing of a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, the medical humanitarian organization said today.
According to hospital staff on the ground, the Al Quds hospital in Aleppo was destroyed by at least one airstrike which directly hit the building, reducing it to rubble. Other airstrikes in the neighborhood also hit areas close to the hospital.
“MSF categorically condemns this outrageous targeting of yet another medical facility in Syria,” said Muskilda Zancada, MSF head of mission for Syria. “This devastating attack has destroyed a vital hospital in Aleppo, and the main referral center for pediatric care in the area. Where is the outrage among those with the power and obligation to stop this carnage?”
The situation in Aleppo city, consistently at the frontlines of the brutal conflict, was critical even before this attack. An estimated 250,000 people remain in the city, which has seen dramatic increases in levels of bombardment, fighting and fatalities in recent weeks. Only one road remains open in and out of the non-government held areas. If this road becomes blocked, the city will be besieged.
Over the last week, several other medical structures have been attacked and destroyed in Aleppo, and five rescue workers from the Syrian Civil Defense organization have been killed. MSF has donated medical supplies to Al Quds hospital since 2012, and has built a very strong working relationship with the staff there.
“Compounding this tragedy is that the dedication and commitment of the staff of Al Quds, working under unimaginable conditions, has been unwavering throughout this bloody conflict,” said Zancada.
The 34-bed hospital included an emergency room, obstetric care, an outpatient department, an inpatient department, an intensive care unit and an operating theater. Eight doctors and 28 nurses worked full time in the hospital, which was the main referral center for pediatrics in Aleppo.
MSF runs six medical facilities across northern Syria and supports more than 150 health centers and hospitals across the country, many of them in besieged areas. Several hospitals across north and south Syria have been bombed since the start of 2016, including seven supported by MSF, in which at least 42 people have been killed, including at least 16 medical staff.
Bombs hitting hospitals, doctors and rescue workers killed, civilians starving, scores of dead and injured every day – the raw, bleeding statistics of Syria’s unending war are making a nonsense of an already fragile truce and destroying the slim hopes that peace talks can even carry on.
Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy for Syria, is a consummate diplomat, but this week he has struggled to mask a sense of rising panic – appealing to the US and Russia to come together to stave off what his humanitarian coordinator warned on Thursday would be a new “catastrophe” if violence did not stop.
De Mistura reported privately to the UN security council on Wednesday on the latest “proximity” talks in Geneva, where he met the two Syrian sides separately. Opposition negotiators walked out last week, insisting they could not stay in the Palais des Nations while their people were suffering on the ground.
“How can you have substantial talks when you have only news about bombing and shelling?” De Mistura asked journalists afterwards. “Barely alive” was his blunt characterisation of the truce. And diplomats said he spoke far more forcefully on the video link to New York.
Mainstream Syrian rebels insist they are committed to a political solution despite pressure from their own constituency – never mind Islamist groups which do not believe in negotiations and want more support to fight. Britain’s diplomats and spin doctors have helped hold the line, with generous Saudi cash.
Bashar al-Assad’s representative, Bashar Jaafari, maintains a poker face when he calls the opposition the “Riyadh delegation” – a propaganda line that fits the Damascus narrative of a foreign uprising against Assad’s legitimate rule while ignoring his backing from Iran and Russia and mounting evidence of the atrocities he has committed.
Jaafari has met De Mistura more often than the rebels, but he has not discussed the transitional governing body that is supposedly at the heart of the process. Assad’s version of peace is a national unity government which he would still lead – in the sixth year of a conflict that has claimed 400,000 lives and made millions homeless.
Western responses to the Syrian crisis were hesitant from the start. Last autumn Russia deployed its air force, ostensibly to fight Isis but in reality to support Assad. Its sudden (partial) withdrawal has not been followed by hoped-for political pressure from Moscow on Damascus.
“Russia has set itself up as the protector of the Assad regime,” said the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, “so it has a duty to bring its full influence to bear.” That sounded suspiciously like more wishful thinking.
Syrian rebels and European governments alike think Barack Obama has moved perilously close to Vladimir Putin. Russia is now trying to add the powerful Islamist rebel groups, Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, to the internationally proscribed Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra – with no opposition from the Americans.
This tacit cooperation matters: the US and Russia brokered February’s cessation-of-hostilities deal, run the taskforce monitoring it and are working on an updated map of where attacks can take place. So what De Mistura called “revitalising” the truce agreement could in fact mean intensified targeting of anti-Assad forces.
The Russians are also pressing for the inclusion of other, more pliable, Syrians, including Kurds, in the Geneva talks – with Putin portrayed in one Arab cartoon painting Matryoshka dolls to sit round the Geneva negotiating table.
Arab governments are bitterly divided over Syriabut many see a lesson that was learned the hard way by the Palestinians: the Oslo agreement of 1993 appeared to herald an end to the conflict with Israel, but the long “peace process” that followed saw Israel swallow up more Palestinian land to the point that no solution was left.
The comparison being made now is that just as the US provided cover for Israel, Russia is protecting Assad. In both cases, negotiations and diplomacy came to look like a fig-leaf for inaction – talk of peace masking the pursuit of policies on the ground that rendered hopes for a just or workable outcome meaningless.
ONE SCARECROW + ONE PAPER TIGER AN EQUATION OF PARALYSIS! TURKEY CAN'T EVEN PROTECT ITSELF FROM SHELLS FIRED FROM ACROSS THE SYRIAN BORDER, LET ALONE HELP THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION. TURKEY HAS BEEN A POOR BET FOR SYRIANS.
Footage uploaded to social media purports to show chaos after an airstrike targeted an MSF-supported hospital in a rebel-held area of Aleppo on Wednesday. MSF said doctors and patients were killed, including the last paediatrician in the Syrian city
One of Syrian city’s last paediatricians among the dead, as UN envoy says ceasefire is now ‘barely alive’ The Guardian Link
A Syrian hospital backed by Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been destroyed in an airstrike in Aleppo, killing patients and doctors including one of the last paediatricians remaining in the rebel-held part of the city.
MSF said the al-Quds hospital was targeted in an airstrike on Wednesday that killed 14 patients and staff members including at least two doctors, with the toll expected to rise.
The latest attack is part of a broader pattern of systematic targeting of hospitals by the government of Bashar al-Assad, as the humanitarian situation in the divided commercial capital of Syria grows more desperate under intense combat.
“MSF categorically condemns this outrageous targeting of yet another medical facility in Syria” said Muskilda Zancada, MSF’s head of mission in Syria. “This devastating attack has destroyed a vital hospital in Aleppo, and the main referral centre for paediatric care in the area. Where is the outrage among those with the power and obligation to stop this carnage?”
Marianne Gasser, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Syria mission, said in a statement: “The recent attack on the ICRC-supported Quds hospital is unacceptable and sadly this is not the first time the lifesaving medical services have been hit.
“We urge all the parties to spare the civilians. Don’t attack hospitals, don’t use weapons that cause widespread damage. Otherwise, Aleppo will be pushed further to the brink of humanitarian disaster.”
Neither the ICRC nor MSF assigned blame for the attack, but the Syrian and Russian air forces have carried out almost all the aerial strikes on the opposition-controlled east of the city. The ICRC said the intense battles raging in Aleppo could put millions at grave risk of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Fresh airstrikes on Thursday on the rebel-held part of the city killed 20 people and brought down at least one residential building, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The UK-based monitor said shelling by insurgents on government-held areas killed at least 14.
“It’s like an apocalypse,” said Bara Abu Saleh, a city councillor in rebel-held Aleppo, speaking by Skype as explosions were heard in the background. “Today around 25 people have been killed in different areas. Just now a rocket landed close but it didn’t explode.”
Large-scale fighting erupted in and around Aleppo over the weekend, upending a fragile truce that had held for nearly two months as peace talks to end the five-year conflict got under way in Geneva. These negotiations are now deadlocked as the Assad regime refuses to discuss the possibility of a transitional government, and the truce appears to have all but collapsed, with over 100 dead in Aleppo province in the latest round of fighting.
Abu Saleh said there are also food shortages in the city, with truckers struggling to deliver 4,000 tonnes of wheat because Kurdish forces are firing on vehicles on the only road that connects the city to other rebel-held areas. While civilians are using rooftops and gardens to grow vegetables inside the city, a lack of fuel makes it hard to supply these impromptu “farms” with water.
After a period of comparative normality, many residents have hidden themselves away again since the bombing re-started, Abu Saleh said. But various shops are still open, and some residents are trying to carry on as normal. “People are determined to live their lives,” said Abu Saleh. “The people who are in Aleppo now are people who decided to stay here. We used to look at people in Gaza and wonder how they live their lives normally – but now we know.”
The Syrian government considers any medical facilities in opposition-held territory as legitimate military targets, saying that they are de facto illegal. Hospitals in opposition-held parts of Syria are refusing to share GPS coordinateswith Russian and Syrian authorities because of repeated attacks on medical facilities and workers, fearing that sharing the locations would make the hospitals targets.
As early as 2013, the UN independent commission of inquiry investigating alleged war crimes in Syria said attacks on medical facilities were being used systematically as a weapon of war by the Assad regime. Attacks by both sides on medical facilities have continued unabated in recent months. MSF said in February that a total of 94 airstrikes and shelling attacks hit facilities supported by the organisation in 2015 alone.
A man gestures amid the rubble of destroyed buildings after an airstrike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Kalasa in Aleppo. Photograph: Ameer Alhalbi/AFP/Getty Images
In February last year, the NGO Physicians for Human Rights said it had documented 224 attacks on 175 health facilities since the start of the conflict, and 599 medical personnel had been killed. The attacks continued after the Russian intervention – the organisation documented at least 10 attacks by Russian aircraft on medical facilities in October alone, the first month of Russia’s aerial campaign.
The attack came shortly after the two-month ceasefire agreed in February with US and Russian support was on Wednesday described by the UN as “barely alive”.
Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy, urged the leaders of the US and Russia to revitalise the damaged peace process as he briefed the security council on the collapse of the latest talks in Geneva. “The legacy of both President Obama and President Putin is linked to the success of what has been a unique initiative which started very well. It needs to end very well. There is no reason that both of them which have been putting so much political capital in that success story and have a common interest in not seeing Syria end up in another cycle of war should not be able to revitalise what they have created and which is still alive but barely.”
The Geneva talks are deadlocked over the key question of Assad’s future. The opposition insists he must step down, while the government in Damascus says his role is not up for negotiation. The war, now in its sixth year, is estimated to have killed 400,000 people and has made millions homeless.
Russia announced on Wednesday that the Geneva proximity talks would resume on 10 May, though UN sources said no date had been set, amid growing uncertainty as to whether they would be reconvened at all. De Mistura presided over a two-week round of talks interrupted by a walkout by the Syrian rebels just days after it began.
De Mistura still aims to convene a ministerial meeting of major and regional powers under the International Syria Support Group, before the next round is held. Riyad Hijab, head of the Syrian opposition high negotiations committee, also called for a meeting of the Friends of the Syrian People group – which has called for Assad to go and crucially excludes Russia and Iran, the Syrian president’s close allies.
Amid concern about the humanitarian situation in Syria, British, French, German and Dutch MPs on Thursday urged their governments to carry out airdrops of food and medicine to relieve starving civilians trapped in areas that are besieged by Syrian government forces.
In a letter to the Guardian, the MPs and MEPs from across the European political spectrum write: “Our countries, the UK, France, Netherlands and Germany, are all flying in Syrian air space as part of the anti-Isis effort. If the UN lacks the ability to deliver aid, we have the capacity and presence to act. And high-altitude airdrops would keep our brave pilots safe. Airdropping aid is only ever a last resort, but there are dependable partners on the ground in these besieged areas ready to coordinate the distribution of aid.”
Over 100 civilians have been killed by airstrikes, shelling and rocket fire since Friday Link
Syrian regime airstrikes hit a hospital in the al-Sukkari district in Aleppo, killing over 20 civilians, including children, a doctor and hospital guards.
A wave of night time airstrikes hit a hospital in Syria supported by Doctors Without Borders and nearby buildings in the rebel-held part of the contested city of Aleppo, killing at least 27 people.
Six hospital staff and three children were also among the casualties.
The strikes, shortly before midnight Wednesday, hit the well-known al-Quds field hospital in the rebel-held district of Sukkari in Aleppo, according to opposition activists and rescue workers.
The chief Syrian opposition negotiator Mohammed Alloush blamed the government of President Bashar al-Assad for the deadly airstrikes.
The Civil Defence, a volunteer first-responders agency whose members went to the scene of the attack, put the death toll at 30 and said the dead included six hospital staff.
Among those slain was one of the last paediatricians remaining in opposition-held areas of the contested city and a dentist.
Among those slain was one of the last paediatricians remaining in opposition-held areas of the contested city
The agency, also known as the White Helmets, said the al-Quds hospital and adjacent buildings were struck in four consecutive airstrikes.
It said there were still victims buried under the rubble and that the rescue work continued.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 27 were killed, including three children.
Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, said in a series of tweets that at least 14 patients and staff were among those killed, with the toll expected to rise.
A video posted online by the White Helmets showed a number of lifeless bodies, including those of children, being pulled out from a building and loaded into ambulances amid screaming and wailing.
It also showed distraught rescue workers trying to keep onlookers away from the scene, apparently fearing more airstrikes.
A video posted online by the White Helmets showed a number of lifeless bodies, including those of children, being pulled out from a building and loaded into ambulances amid screaming and wailing
Alloush, who was one of the leading negotiators of the opposition in the Geneva talks, described the airstrikes as one of the latest "war crimes" of Assad's government.
"Whoever carries out these massacres needs a war tribunal and a court of justice to be tried for his crimes. He does not need a negotiating table," Alloush said. "Now, the environment is not conducive for any political action."
In a separate incident, at least 11 people were killed and 35 wounded by al-Qaeda affiliate group, al-Nusra Front in western Aleppo, state news agency SANA reported.
Following a lull in fighting after the ceasefire took effect on February 27, violence has intensified in recent days, with more than 100 civilians reported dead in airstrikes, shelling and rocket fire since Friday.
Once Syria's commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.
The fighting has put the ceasefire in jeopardy and overshadowed a new round of UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva that were entering a recess on Wednesday.
More than 270,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions been forced from their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011.
British MPs have voted down a plan to admit just 600 child refugees a year. With governments across the continent abdicating responsibility, this is an ethical catastrophe of historic proportions By Patrick Kingsley
In 1938, representatives from 32 western states gathered in the pretty resort town of Evian, southern France. Evian is now famous for its water, but back then, the delegates had something else on their minds. They were there to discuss whether to admit a growing number of Jewish refugees, fleeing persecution in Germany and Austria. After several days of negotiations, most countries, including Britain, decided to do nothing.
On Monday, I was reminded of the Evian conference when British MPs voted against welcoming just 600 child refugees a year over the next half-decade. The two moments are not exactly comparable. History doesn’t necessarily repeat itself. But it does echo, and it does remind us of the consequences of ethical failure. Looking back at their inaction at Evian, delegates could claim they were unaware of what was to come. In 2016, we no longer have that excuse.
Nevertheless, both in Britain and across Europe and America, we currently seem keen to forget the lessons of the past. In Britain, many of those MPs who voted against admitting a few thousand refugees are also campaigning to unravel a mechanism – the European Union – that was created, at least in part, to heal the divisions that tore apart the continent during the first and second world wars.
Across Europe, leaders recently ripped up the 1951 refugee convention – a landmark document partly inspired by the failures of people such as the Evian delegates – in order to justify deporting Syrians back to Turkey, a country where most can’t work legally, despite recent legislative changes; where some have allegedly been deported back to Syria; and still more have been shot at the border.
Emboldened by this, the Italian and German governments have since joined David Cameron in calling for refugees to be sent back to Libya, a war zone where – in a startling display of cognitive dissonance – some of the same governments are also mulling a military intervention. Where many migrants work in conditions tantamount to slavery. Where three separate governments are vying for control. And where Isis runs part of the coastline.
In Greece, Europe’s leaders have forced the bankrupt government to lock up all arriving asylum seekers – and then reneged on a promise to help care for them, or move them to better-resourced countries elsewhere on the continent. The result is a dire situation on the Greek islands, where the world’s richest continent has contrived to jail babies, and then deny them access to adequate amounts of milk formula.
In Denmark, asylum seekers are forced to hand over valuables to pay for their stay, and volunteers have been prosecuted as smugglers for giving them lifts. In America, where boatloads of refugees were turned away from US ports in the 30s, more than 30 governors have refused to accept Muslim refugees. Some called for an outright ban on anyone fleeing a war that is ironically the partial result of catastrophic mistakes in American foreign policy over the past two decades.
Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Angela Merkel speak to children in Nizip refugee camp at the weekend. Photograph: Umit Bektas/Reuters
On Saturday afternoon, I came face to face with a similar kind of wilful blindness, close to Turkey’s border with Syria. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Donald Tusk, the European council president, were visiting a Syrian refugee camp. In exchange for Turkey readmitting asylum seekers deported back from Europe, Europe is giving Turkey several billion euros to help care for the Syrians now stranded on its soil. Merkel and Tusk were at the camp to highlight the first beneficiaries of this cash, and to show that Turkey is an appropriate place to house refugees – that life inTurkey can be every bit as nice as life in Europe.
Merkel has shown extraordinary ethical leadership over the past year, but in this case she was participating in a charade. The camp she visited was pleasant enough – but it does not represent the lived reality of most Syrians in Turkey, 90% of whom live in urban poverty outside the camps. To really understand the limbo in which they are now trapped, Merkel should have visited the sweatshops on the other side of town, where thousands of Syrian children work 12-hour days to support their families. Or, even better, she might have peered over the border wall to the south, to watch Turkish soldiers shoot at Syrians as they try to escape the battlegrounds of northern Syria.
Instead, Merkel visited a sanitised refugee camp for 45 minutes. Most camp residents were ordered out of sight for the duration of her visit, leaving Merkel to spend roughly 20 seconds shaking hands with a line of just five Syrian men. It was a PR stunt stage-managed for the benefit of a hundred waiting journalists – a visual metaphor for the see-no-evil excuses that Europe has used to justify deporting refugees back to Turkey. “Today, Turkey is the best example for the whole world for how we should treat refugees,” Tusk told us later in the day. “Nobody should lecture Turkey on what to do.”
Europe’s abdication of responsibility is usually justified in the name of cultural superiority. Invoking a religion named after a man who was at times both a refugee and a migrant, several European politicians have used Christianity to justify their rejection of refugees. “Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian?” asks Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. “There is no alternative, and we have no option but to defend our borders.”
But citing religion and morality shouldn’t obscure the truth. The pope aside, by turning a blind eye to reality, by forgetting the lessons of the past, and by tearing up the post-war settlement, Europe risks an ethical catastrophe that would return us to the moral collapse of the 1930s. With the far right on the rise across Europe, it has been argued that deporting refugees back to places such as Turkey and Libya will save the continent from relapsing into the extremism of the interwar years. But I wonder if the opposite is true – if instead of averting a lurch to the right, it in fact takes us one step closer.
The Evian conference may have happened long ago, but we can still learn its lessons. It reminds us, just as Hugo Rifkind wrote in a moving essay about the Holocaust last year, that “we, as humans, balance on the very lip of the unspeakable; always far closer to toppling than we might wish to admit. All of us, everywhere, all the time.”
A few hours before Merkel arrived at the refugee camp on Saturday, I was on the other side of town at a sweatshop full of Syrians making shoes. The manager, Abu Shihab, hadn’t heard of anything like the Evian conference, and he didn’t mention the Holocaust. But he knows about Europe, and its reputation for morality. And he thinks it’s now undeserved.
“Cats and dogs in Germany can get pet passports – and they’re closing the borders to humans?” he asked. “History will document this.”
• The New Odyssey by Patrick Kingsley (Guardian Faber, £14.99) is published on 5 May. Pre-order your copy for £9.99 from bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.
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