As the mass of migrants, largely from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries have continued to flow to Europe, particularly through the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, the European Union itself has now decided to take the issue as an holistic one, affecting the continent as a whole, and not just specific countries.
The signs are that anti-Middle Eastern and chauvinistic postures have begun to be taken by the citizens of those countries which have now begun to establish virtual closure of boundaries where the movements are taking place. And in some measure this is being justified by assertions on the part of their governments that what has been occurring is not a flight of persons that are victims of persecution in their local territories and thus can be described as refugees; but, rather, that the present flow of individuals and families is a merely a movement of migrants in search of work unavailable in their home territories, even though it is a consequence of internal conflict.
There can be little doubt that the emphasis in the movement of persons is that indicated in the flow from Syria where the civil war – or more precisely the internal war against the regime of President Assad ‒ has become more and more devastating. So what the European Union has been treating as a domestic Syrian problem has essentially been left by the Union to be concluded through a decisive victory either by Assad, or by his opponents.
In that context the EU and the United States – in effect the members of the Nato alliance ‒ have substantially been standing aside from any diplomatic intervention, now that it has become clear that the new formation opposed to the Assad regime, the so-called Islamic State (IS) militarily organized grouping has been gaining a certain dominance in the country. And to this has been added a realization that from within Western Europe a tendency has now developed focused on concentrating on persons of Middle Eastern and Asian origin as recruits to IS.
The result has been, apparently to the surprise of the Western powers, not a post-civil war internal conclusion through direct removal of Assad as the Saudi Arabians would prefer, or by a partially negotiated solution to which the Iranian government has been partial. In a sense, the present situation has arisen because neither of these solutions seems to be on the horizon, leading to a situation of an upgrading of the war efforts by all parties.
The consequence, as is now obvious to the Western powers is that the Syrian population has now been experiencing the effects of a worsening situation and has acted to save itself. No doubt many of them have come to the conclusion that as IS has sought to extend itself to a fragmented Iraq to bolster its own domestic situation, the Western powers, and in particular President Obama’s United States’ priorities do not relate to Syria in itself, as the war situation has spread.
Indeed the flow of refugees, though predominantly from Syria, has also been reflected in an increasing flow, as well, from neighbouring countries on the Mediterranean like Libya, where Western intervention liquidated Gadaffi, essentially leaving a political vacuum, in addition to states like Eritrea, where civil war has raged for years.
In a sense, a Western diplomatic intervention in the Syrian situation has essentially been stymied by the fact of the uncertain and untidy departure of the US from Iraq, by an unwillingness on the part of the US to be extensively involved while still trying to finalise its own exit from Afghanistan and seek a stabilization of Libya, whose citizens have felt the thrust of American and Nato military intervention; secondly by the substantial instability in Iraq itself which is unfinished American business; and finally, in some measure, the fact of the extensive US-Iran negotiations on the nuclear weapons negotiation issue, opposed by Saudi Arabia, and which obviously from the United States perspective, has taken priority over Iran’s alleged contemporary preoccupation in the Syrian civil war.
The European response to the migration obviously has a larger priority from the point of view of the citizens of the EU, than it would have for the United States. Germany, as in the recent internal EU issue of the fate of Greece’s economy, has taken the lead. For while Britain’s Prime Minister Cameron has recently fought an election in which hostility to migration featured, and he has become preoccupied with fighting off tendencies from within his own party to leave the EU, it is obvious that a strong stance permissive of immigration would be a sensitive political issue.
How the EU, the most proximate region to the Middle East, handles the issue now becomes the dominant Nato problem. It threatens not only to be a complex geopolitical issue, but as the reactions in countries like Hungary, now being used essentially as transit points to the original core of the EU indicate, it threatens to upset the EU consensus on immigration, already becoming a heated political issue in the former Eastern European states.
