Category Archives: European Union

The rise of right-wing populists

The New York Times reports: Mass shootings by Islamist militants. Migrants crashing borders. International competition punishing workers but enriching elites.

Across the Western world, a new breed of right-leaning populists like Donald J. Trump, Marine Le Pen in France and Viktor Orban in Hungary are surging in popularity by capitalizing on a climate of insecurity rivaling the period after the First World War.

Many of them — as Mr. Trump did this week — have made headlines by railing against Muslim immigrants, calling them a threat to public safety and cultural identity. Left-leaning critics have compared the populists to the fascists of the early 20th century. Some riding the wave, like the Freedom Party in Austria or Golden Dawn in Greece, have specific neo-Nazi roots.

Unlike earlier right-wing movements, this generation of populists disavows the overt racism, militaristic rhetoric and associations with fascism that until recently scared away many mainstream voters.

Before the recent terrorist attacks or the European migrant crisis cast a spotlight on Muslim immigration, the populists had built support as trade protectionists or economic nationalists appealing to working-class voters who felt disaffected from established parties and political elites. And, for the first time in nearly a century, established parties across Europe and the United States are struggling to fend off or counter the populist insurgents as their competition pulls the mainstream to the right.

“What you are seeing here is quite a radical shift,” said Roger Eatwell, a political scientist at the University of Bath who studies right-wing parties.

Ms. Le Pen is the best-known figure from more than a dozen right-leaning populist parties across Europe that have scored big gains over the last two years. This week, her National Front party won the largest share of the vote in the first round of regional elections in France, with 30 percent, making her a contender for the presidency in 2017. She campaigns against what she calls the Islamization of France and has compared Muslims praying in French streets to the Nazi occupation.

But Ms. Le Pen fuses her cultural chauvinism with appeals to the economic anxieties of working or lower-middle class voters who — like their counterparts across Europe — have suffered from high unemployment, stagnant wages and growing income inequality, especially since the financial crisis of 2008.

“They are pulling out all the stops for the migrants, the illegals, but who is looking out for our retirees?” Ms. Le Pen asked in a recent campaign appearance. “They are stealing from the poor to give to foreigners who did not even ask our permission to come here.”

Mr. Trump on Monday evoked comparisons to Ms. Le Pen and her European counterparts with his call to close American borders to all Muslims “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”

Ms. Le Pen said that was too much for her, perhaps in part because she feared jeopardizing the progress she had made in shedding her party’s previous image as racist and anti-Semitic.

“Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?” she asked on Thursday when questioned about Mr. Trump’s comments during a television interview. “I defend all the French people in France, regardless of their origin, regardless of their religion.”

Others in Europe’s right-leaning populist parties, though, are applauding Mr. Trump for breaking with what they call the multiculturalist orthodoxy of dominant political elites. [Continue reading…]

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To defeat ISIS, embrace refugees

Musa al-Gharbi writes: In the aftermath of the series of attacks in Paris, attributed to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), French President François Hollande has declared a three-month state of emergency. This measure enables the military and law enforcement to monitor, arrest, detain and interrogate persons, with little or no due process. These powers will be exercised primarily against France’s besieged Arab, Muslim, immigrant and refugee populations.

Meanwhile, France has closed its borders and is calling for an indefinite suspension of the EU’s open-border (“Schengen”) system. Other EU states are calling for reducing the Schengen zone to exclude those countries most effected by the refugee crisis. Throughout the EU there is growing resistance to admitting or resettling refugees from the greater Middle East.

Across the Atlantic, the U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted to halt the already stringent and meager U.S. program to resettle refugees from Iraq and Syria. Thirty-one governors have warned that would-be migrants from the Middle East are not welcome in their states, and a majority of the American public has turned against accepting more refugees. One of the frontrunner candidates for president of the United States, Donald Trump, has even called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” All of these maneuvers are playing into the hands of ISIS.

ISIS has strongly condemned refugees’ seeking asylum in Western nations, repeatedly warned would-be expatriates that Muslims will never be truly accepted in the United States and the EU (hence the importance of an “Islamic State”). In order to render this a self-fulfilling prophecy, ISIS ensured that one of the attackers carried a fraudulent Syrian passport, which was left to be discovered at the scene of the crime before its owner detonated his suicide vest.

ISIS is counting on Western nations to turn would-be refugees back towards their “caliphate,” because this massive outpouring of asylum seekers poses a severe threat to the legitimacy and long-term viability of ISIS. Accordingly, if Western nations were truly committed to undermining ISIS, they should embrace and integrate refugees from ISIS-occupied lands. [Continue reading…]

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What the world is witnessing is the liquidation of Syria

Leila Hudson writes: By the end of September 2015, 8,000 refugees and migrants, most of them Syrian, were arriving in Europe every day. By November, even with the onset of winter, that number had risen to an average of 8,700, with as many as 10,000 arriving on Greek shores on one October day. As of November 2015, the UNHCR counted 744,000 arrivals for the year, nearly triple the 219,000 who came in 2014. The millions displaced by Syria’s civil war and hundreds of thousands making their way by foot, boat, train, bus, car and truck across Eastern Europe are people hoping to live and work in peace and dignity somewhere on the planet. They are not a swarm or an invasion or a metastasis. As the aftermath of the November 13 Paris massacres showed, refugees do not seem to be a vector for terrorism, which is more easily incubated domestically and through communications networks. They are girls, boys, men and women, and every one of them has a full complement of ordinary hopes, fears and dreams. Most have experienced trauma and mustered tremendous willpower and determination. How the world treats them will have consequences for all.

What might one day be remembered as the Great Syrian Migration for its scale, or the Syrian Exodus for its epic and tragic character, is currently referred to as the European migration crisis. The proto-genocidal war in Syria, and even the pressures of four million refugees on Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey are by any measure more critical than the challenges to Europe’s immigration and integration policies. However, these problems were easier for the global north to dismiss as part of a chronically benighted and distant Middle East. There has been some media controversy over this Eurocentric framing of the issue and how to refer to these asylum seekers. Al-Jazeera announced a policy decision to avoid the word “migrant” and exclusively use the word “refugee,” as flight from war zones creates de facto refugees. Under the spirit of the 1951 Geneva Convention, the fact of displacement generates refugee status until proven otherwise. Most North American and European mainstream media outlets continue to use the term “migrant,” assuming that it is neutral and descriptive, and that legal refugee status will be confirmed, de jure, by an asylum court or other formal national or international process. There are important legal implications depending on the word and assumptions used; those judged to be refugees have a path to asylum and legal status, while economic migrants are subject to deportation. The displaced people themselves often prefer not to be labeled and categorized.

As this subject is discussed in the English-language media, the core of Syrian refugees is joined each week by people fleeing Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Bangladesh and recently even Iran and Lebanon. Refugees and migrants from other zones of war and poverty are joining the caravan to Europe, sometimes even claiming to be Syrian to gain an edge in the quest for asylum. Falsified Syrian papers are available for purchase from the same smugglers selling rubber dinghies on the Turkish coast. These non-Syrian refugees and migrants are pushed from their homes by inequality, fear and insecurity and lured by promises of freedom, tolerance and prosperity. [Continue reading…]

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Meet the Czech Republic’s answer to Donald Trump — except he’s already President

By Jan Culik, University of Glasgow

In the days following the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, world leaders expressed their solidarity with France. Many also reiterated that the actions of a few terrorists do not represent a faith.

Others took the opportunity to spread extreme positions about Islam. Donald Trump, for example, has argued that Muslims should be banned from entering the US. Meanwhile, the president of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman decided to mark what many saw as a period of mourning in Europe after Paris by attending a rally organised by an anti-Muslim organisation.

Just as Trump continues to appeal as a presidential candidate, the Czech public can’t seem to get enough of Zeman despite his xenophobic behaviour. Some even seem to love him because of it. He has become a symbol of defiant anti-muslim, anti-refugee, racist and xenophobic rhetoric. According to a recent opinion poll, 72.3% of Czechs like Zeman for his anti-refugee hate speech.

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What the Paris attacks tell us about ISIS strategy

Der Spiegel reports: For years, experts have worried that the up to 4,000 young men and women from Western Europe who are believed to have gone to Syria and Iraq to either fight with Islamic State or live inside it might one day return and conduct attacks here. European IS fighters have long been using social media platforms to openly discuss their dreams of attacks on their home countries.

“Attacking Europe is in the DNA of many of those who have traveled from Europe to Syria,” says jihad expert Wassim Nasr of French international news channel France 24. Still, he argues, it is very unlikely that individual members like [Abdelhamid] Abaaoud made the decision to actually carry out the attacks on their own. He see it is “an issue of such strategic importance that it has been directed from the highest level of IS.” And it appears that the decision was taken months ago.

It’s not surprising that IS chose France as the target of its first attack in Europe. With around 1,200 current and former fighters, the largest number of IS jihadist from Western Europe originate from France. With its numerous military deployments in Africa and the Middle East, France is very much in the terrorists’ crosshairs. Measured against its overall population, the only country in Europe with a greater per capita number of IS fighters is Belgium. Germany also has several hundred residents who have gone to the region as jihadists.

The Europeans tended to play a relatively minor role in combat for the IS in recent years, but they have an important function in terms of recruitment. And under Islamic State’s new strategy, they are also in charge of bringing the war to Europe. The terrorists who struck in Paris may have spent some time in Syria, but they are the product of our society. In that respect, fighting in Syria to prevent Islamic State terror in the West can only have a limited effect. [Continue reading…]

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Belgium is politically splintered and vulnerable to terrorism. So is Europe

The Economist reports: Brussels, wrote Tony Judt, is “a metaphor for all that can go wrong in a modern city”. The late historian, writing in 1999, was referring to the civic neglect that has left much of the Belgian capital, home to most institutions of the European Union, an unsightly mess of concrete and roadworks with the worst traffic in Europe. But his words could just as well apply to the string of terrorist plots and attacks that has provided Brussels, and some other Belgian cities, with a scabrous reputation as an incubator of jihadi ideology and a paragon of law-enforcement incompetence.

Belgium has long been the butt of European jokes, thanks in large part to its dysfunctional politics. In 2010-11 squabbles over the rights of Flemish-speakers on the outskirts of Brussels held up the formation of a government for 589 days, a world record. But the terror threat has exposed the darker side of Belgium’s maladministration, in the form of uncoordinated security services and neglected areas like Molenbeek, a down-at-heel Muslim-majority commune in west Brussels. After the Paris attacks, French officials sniped at their Belgian counterparts on learning that several of the perpetrators had hatched their schemes in Brussels. Two had been questioned by Belgian police earlier this year. One of them, Salah Abdeslam, fled to Brussels after having driven three of the Paris suicide-bombers to their destination.

Now Brussels is enduring its own threat. On November 21st Belgian officials raised the terror alert in the capital to its highest level, citing fears of multiple Paris-style attacks. The “lockdown” was not the near-curfew portrayed in some foreign media. Yet schools, shops and underground transport were closed for several days, concerts and sporting events were cancelled and armed troops patrolled the streets. It is hard to think of a European precedent for such a suspension of civic life, and it is not over. A series of police raids failed to net Mr Abdeslam, and Brussels will remain on high alert at least until November 30th. [Continue reading…]

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Europe’s many-headed security crisis – a challenge to rival the Cold War

By Umut Korkut, Glasgow Caledonian University

The downing of a Russian jet on November 24 over Turkey’s border with Syria is indicative of the security challenges that Europe faces. To deal with Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the refugee crisis, Europe needs to neutralise Islamic State and stabilise Syria to stop the flow of refugees. That means that the EU, Turkey and Russia need to respond coherently to Syria.

The stakes are unimaginably high – with the EU already divided internally over its policy on refugees, failure in Syria risks making things worse. That could undermine the EU at a time when the terrorist threat needs the union to be as tight-knit as possible.

First, the EU’s internal situation. Since the surge of refugees over the summer, the new position of Europe’s increasingly strident right – particularly in eastern Europe and Russia – is that people’s skin colour determines their inclination to terrorism. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, recently said that “all terrorists are immigrants”. Led also by Poland – which is taking an increasingly hard line on migrants – the conservative right in the region wants to draw a boundary that is white, native and Christian on one side and non-white, non-Christian and immigrant on the other.

The sad fact is that the most homogenous countries have been the least able and willing to cope with the influx of refugees – and this has had substantial knock-on effects. When Croatia shipped newcomers to the Hungarian and Slovenian borders within hours of arrival in October, Hungary responded by extending its notorious fence to close the border between these two EU members. Meanwhile, Slovenia transported all its new arrivals to the Austrian border, which increased the disproportionate burden that Austria and Germany had assumed on behalf of the newer EU members.

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Belgium is a failed state

Tim King (editor of European Voice for The Economist) writes: [Molenbeek] is one of the most densely populated parts of Brussels, but its population is only 95,000. And it is not that the entire borough is a no-go zone. The lawlessness problems are concentrated in much smaller areas.

All of which raises the question of why Molenbeek’s problems have been allowed to persist for so long. This is not a task on the same scale as reviving the South Bronx or redressing the industrial blight of Glasgow. The nearest parallel I can think of is Brixton, a London suburb, three miles south of Westminster. Blighted by wartime bomb damage, then home to large contingents of West Indian immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s, it suffered race riots in the 1980s. But much of Brixton has been turned round, so why not Molenbeek?

The answers are an indictment of the Belgian political establishment and of successive reforms over the past 40 years.

Those failures are perhaps one part politics and government; one part police and justice; one part fiscal and economic. In combination they created the vacuum that is being exploited by jihadi terrorists.

Belgium has the trappings of western political structures, but in practice those structures are flawed and have long been so. The academics Kris Deschouwer and Lieven De Winter gave a succinct, authoritative account of the development of political corruption and clientelism in an essay published back in 1998 as part of the piquantly titled book “Où va la Belgique?” (Whither Belgium?)

Almost from the beginning, they explain, the state suffered problems of political legitimacy. [Continue reading…]

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We cannot live in peace at home while millions of people are engulfed in war

Harleen Gambhir writes: Last week, President Obama said that the Islamic State is “contained” in Iraq and Syria, but the group’s attacks in Paris soon afterward showed that it poses a greater threat to the West than ever. The Islamic State is executing a global strategy to defend its territory in Iraq and Syria, foster affiliates in other Muslim-majority areas, and encourage and direct terrorist attacks in the wider world. It has exported its brutality and military methods to groups in Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now it is using tactical skills acquired on Middle Eastern battlefields to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash that will generate even more recruits within Western societies. The United States and its allies must respond quickly to this threat.

The Islamic State’s strategy is to polarize Western society — to “destroy the grayzone,” as it says in its publications. The group hopes frequent, devastating attacks in its name will provoke overreactions by European governments against innocent Muslims, thereby alienating and radicalizing Muslim communities throughout the continent. The atrocities in Paris are only the most recent instances of this accelerating campaign. Since January, European citizens fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have provided online and material support to lethal operations in Paris, Copenhagen and near Lyon, France, as well as attempted attacks in London, Barcelona and near Brussels. Islamic State fighters are likely responsible for destroying the Russian airliner over the Sinai. These attacks are not random, nor are they aimed primarily at affecting Western policy in the Middle East. They are, rather, part of a militarily capable organization’s campaign to mobilize extremist actors already in Europe and to recruit new ones.

The strategy is explicit. The Islamic State explained after the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine that such attacks “compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grayzone themselves. . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens.” The group calculates that a small number of attackers can profoundly shift the way that European society views its 44 million Muslim members and, as a result, the way European Muslims view themselves. Through this provocation, it seeks to set conditions for an apocalyptic war with the West.

Unfortunately, elements of European society are reacting as the Islamic State desires. Far-right parties have gained strength in many European countries. France’s National Front is expected to dominate local elections in northern France this winter; on Saturday, Marine Le Pen, its leader, declared “those who maintain links with Islamism” to be “France’s enemies.” The Danish People’s Party gained 21 percent of the vote in national elections in June on a nationalist, anti-Islamic platform. The anti-foreigner Sweden Democrats is steadily growing in popularity. [Continue reading…]

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Europe and the rising politics of fear

Anna Sauerbrey writes: in Germany as across Europe, Islamophobia is picking up speed. On Saturday, Heiko Maas, Germany’s minister of justice and a Social Democrat, wrote online, “We won’t recede. Freedom and democracy are stronger than terror.” The answer from anti-immigrant commenters was quick, brutal and expletive-laced. “Your boundless idiocy and freedom are making this possible,” was a typical reply.

Germany has, until now, been a political and geographic linchpin in maintaining European adherence to the Schengen agreement, which guarantees open borders across much of the Continent. It will now come under extreme pressure: France, the Netherlands and Spain had tightened border controls by Saturday afternoon, around the same time that Poland announced that it would reduce the number of refugees it had agreed to take.

Whatever we may learn about the actual lives and origins of the perpetrators, whether one or several of them really came to Europe just recently, hidden among hundreds of thousands of refugees, it doesn’t really matter. In the current climate in Germany, facts are fiction and vice versa. Pegida, Alternative für Deutschland and the rest of the right wing have long made it their mantra that the government and mainstream media are lying to the German population — and many agree.

Germany has grown increasingly anxious and angry for some months. Reason might now decide to leave the room, replaced by the politics of fear. And where Germany goes, the rest of Europe will follow. [Continue reading…]

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The economic fallout from the Paris attacks cannot be measured by stock markets

Andrew Ross Sorkin writes: On Monday, market participants steeled themselves for a steep decline, but the indexes in the United States were up more than 1 percent, and markets in Europe were close to flat.

But that reaction — and the reaction to previous attacks — may belie the true cost of terrorism and, more important, underestimate the potential cost of the Paris killings.

“The aftermath of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks may not in itself prompt extensive market-based volatility,” Citigroup wrote in a report, suggesting that financial markets “treat such developments as idiosyncratic and the unfortunate reality of a world where large-scale carnage has become an almost daily, if sickening, development.”

The report, however, said, “We think this time is different.”

That view is consistent with the opinions of some security experts, who in recent days have said that the attack in Paris represents just one in a continuum.

“We have upgraded the risk of terrorist attacks not only in the Middle East but also in the West, as well as the likelihood of increased international military intervention in IS strongholds in Syria, Iraq and Libya,” Citigroup said, referring to the Islamic State.

The attack in Paris could have far-reaching implications for the future of the eurozone and for companies doing business there. The events in Paris could add to the pressure to close borders in the eurozone. It is also reigniting a debate about privacy and surveillance that could have big implications for technology companies.

Over the weekend, Evercore ISI, the research arm of the investment bank Evercore, published a note to its clients suggesting that the events in Paris could threaten the political support inside Germany for its chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has been a big supporter of open borders, of the Syrian migration and of limiting electronic surveillance on civil liberty grounds.

“The connection between the terror threat and migration flows threatens to rupture the border-free Schengen zone,” the note said, describing the borderless, passport-free zone known as the Schengen area. “It challenges Merkel’s position at home and in the wider E.U., nudging higher the tail risk that Europe’s indispensable leader could fall from power.”

The economic implications of this are significant, to say the least. Evercore ISI even speculated it was possible that Ms. Merkel could ultimately be replaced by Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, who has seemingly been inclined to let Greece leave the eurozone.

Policy makers and investors estimating the cost of terrorism often miss the larger picture: While the stock market quickly rebounded after Sept. 11, the true economic damage may have been as high as $3.3 trillion. [Continue reading…]

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This is how AK-47s get to Paris

The Daily Beast reports: France outlaws most gun ownership and it’s almost impossible to legally acquire a high-powered rifle such as an AK-47, so where did the weapons in the Nov. 13 terror attack—not to mention the bloody January assault by Islamic terrorists on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine and the 2012 shootings by a militant in Toulouse—come from?

The answer: Eastern Europe, most likely, where the trafficking of deadly small arms is big, shady business. And where local authorities find it difficult to intervene.

The French government and the European Union know they have a foreign gun problem. But as the chain of attacks illustrates, efforts to tamp down on the flow of weapons have, so far, failed to disarm terrorists.

French police reportedly seized more than 1,500 illegal weapons in 2009 and no fewer than 2,700 in 2010. The number of illegal guns in France has swelled by double-digit percentages annually for several years, Al Jazeera reported, citing figures from Paris-based National Observatory for Delinquency.

The seizures likely made just a tiny dent in the pool of available weapons. “The fact that a Kalashnikov or a rocket launcher can be acquired for as little as 300 to 700 Euros in some parts of the E.U. indicates their ready availability for [organized crime groups], street gangs or groups orchestrating high-profile attacks resulting in significant numbers of casualties,” Europol, the E.U.’s law-enforcement agency, explained in a policy brief. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. State Dept: EU product labeling is not a boycott of Israel

The Jerusalem Post reports: The European Union’s guidelines on consumer labels for Israeli products produced over the pre-1967 lines is not tantamount to a boycott of Israel, Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post.

“We do not believe that labeling the origin of products is equivalent to a boycott. And as you know, we do not consider settlements to be part of Israel. We do not view labeling the origin of products being from the settlements as a boycott of Israel,” Vasquez said.

The EU has also insisted that the measure is not a boycott of Israel and that their concern is the consumer’s right to know as well as compliance with EU legislation. [Continue reading…]

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Israel: Link between EU labelling and Europe’s ‘dark past’ is tactical and confected

By Yoav Galai, University of St Andrews

The EU’s announcement of new guidelines regarding the labelling of settlement products, has been greeted by Israeli officials as well as members of the opposition with a campaign which presents a uniform position against the document that takes the line: it is a boycott, and it is anti-semitic.

The new EU guidelines require that goods from, say, the Golan Heights should be labelled: “product from the Golan Heights (Israeli settlement)”. For products from Palestine territories that are not from settlements, an indication of origin could be “product from Palestine” or “product from West Bank (Palestinian product)”.

The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, with trade worth about US$30 billion – but exports from settlements represent less than about 1% of overall trade.

The decision to label settlement products is in line with existing EU law since 2004 which requires the places of origin of fruits, vegetables and honey to be labelled, but the document has a strong symbolic meaning: it singles out products from settlements. It is this symbolic gesture that has caused alarm in Israel.

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Istanbul has more Syrian refugees than all of Europe says David Miliband

The Associated Press reports: Nearly 60% of refugees are living in cities today and there are currently more Syrian refugees in Istanbul than in all the rest of Europe, the head of the International Rescue Committee has said.

David Miliband told The Associated Press in an interview Monday that “the iconic image” of a refugee being someone in a camp has changed.

He said so many people are fleeing conflict and chaos that there’s no room for them in camps. Equally important, he said, is that most people don’t want to be in refugee camps and when they’re displaced for a long time, they want to earn a living — even if that means working in the black market.

Miliband gave the example of Istanbul, without citing any figures. The International Rescue Committee said there are currently more Syrian refugees in Istanbul – some 366,000 – than the rest of Europe put together.

Currently, there are 20 million refugees in the world, including 2 million in Turkey, and 40 million people uprooted and displaced in their own countries, which Miliband called “a grisly world record.” [Continue reading…]

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Turkey is buying its way into the EU with a deal that won’t solve the refugee crisis

By Durukan Kuzu, Coventry University

The EU has struck a deal with Turkey designed to stem the flow of Syrian refugees into Europe. It offers Turkey a multi-billion euro aid package to handle refugees and take back refugees who entered the EU from Turkish territory, eventually giving them a legal right to settle and work.

In return, the halted talks on advancing Turkey’s EU membership bid will be jump-started, and the EU will accelerate visa-free access for Turks who want to visit the Schengen area.

The deal certainly looks like a win-win scenario for president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ever-pragmatic counterparts in Europe. Many of them fervently blocked Turkey’s accession to the EU only a few years ago after deciding Turkey’s human rights record was not befitting an EU member state. Now, with the prospect of relief from the refugee crisis, those concerns seem to have been shelved.

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Syrian refugees face growing resentment in Turkey

The Wall Street Journal reports: The European Union is looking to Turkey for more help in containing the flow of refugees that have fed the greatest migration in Europe since World War II. It is considering a pledge of up to $3.4 billion in aid requested by Turkey — after the bloc offered $1.1 billion last month — while Turkey in return demands speeding up its membership negotiations with the union and visa liberalization for its citizens.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel traveled to Istanbul on Sunday to secure Turkish authorities’ assistance in containing the refugee influx to Europe via Turkey.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been dismissive of Europe’s newfound alarm over a refugee crisis his government has been long trying to manage — and frustrated by fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization members who have rebuffed his calls to create a safe haven in northern Syria that could reduce the flow of refugees uprooted by war. That has left Turkey to shoulder much of the responsibility, Turkish officials say.

“The two million Syrians are not a burden only financially, but also in other terms,” Omer Celik, spokesman of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, told reporters Friday. “The best solution would be to set up the safety zone inside Syria, settle the Syrians there, and provide them assistance through Turkey.”

The government has handed out just 6,000 work permits to Syrians, a tiny percentage of the immigrant workforce. And less than 15% of Syrian children in Turkey are able to go to school, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq fears a ‘brain drain’ as educated young people head to Europe

The Washington Post reports: Compared to many Iraqis, Mohammed Falah concedes that his life isn’t so bad. He has a career, a home.

Nonetheless, the 24-year-old civil engineer from Baghdad plans to fly to Turkey next week to join the surge of migrants and refugees making a bid for a better life in Europe. It is part of what Iraqi officials describe as a new “brain drain” as young graduates seize what they perceive as a rare opportunity to leave a country racked by violence.

More than 50,000 Iraqis have left the country over the past three months, according to the United Nations, joining the hundreds of thousands making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean.

Nearly 3.2 million people have been forced to leave their homes since Islamic State militants began to seize Iraqi territory early last year — the fastest-growing displacement crisis in the world.

Iraqi officials, however, say a disproportionate number of those leaving are not among the displaced, but educated young men who can afford the journey.

“I saw this wave of young people who were going, many of my friends going, and I saw this as a chance,” said Falah, who hopes to make it to Germany. “I’m in a better position than many people, but I want to make a better future for my family.”

Unlike many displaced families who make the potentially deadly journey together, Falah plans to leave his wife and 6-month-old daughter behind in Baghdad, hoping they can join him legally once he has settled.

The Iraqi government does not keep figures on the number leaving, but Joseph Sylawa, a member of the Iraqi parliament committee for migration and displacement, said the number is estimated to be as high as 1,000 a day.

“It’s a death blow,” he said. “Without its young people, Iraq will never be able to rebuild.” [Continue reading…]

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