Syrian refugees next door?

Syrian refugee Dania poses at the Sacramento, California apartment complex she lives in. REUTERS/Max Whittaker

Jeffrey H. Cohen, The Ohio State University
Following the March 2016 bombings in Brussels, Donald Trump stated:

We have to be smart … We’re taking in people without real documentation. We don’t know where they are coming from … they could be ISIS-related.

Not to be outdone, Sen. Ted Cruz added:

We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.

The statements on the Brussels bombings amplified the responses of the GOP presidential candidates to the 2015 Paris attacks. Trump expressed the fear that our nation was at risk because resettlement could become a “Trojan Horse,” allowing violent terrorists easy entry. John Kasich was concerned about our national security being undermined.
These fears are shared by 31 of our nation’s governors and a majority of U.S. citizens.
But what are the chances that a refugee could move next door? And even if one did, what is the risk that he or she would turn out to be a terrorist?

Running the numbers

Five-year-old Syrian refugee Leen works on her homework in California. REUTERS/Max Whittaker

Certainly the number of Syrian refugees who have fled their homeland is staggering. The UNHCR estimates that the civil war has created about 5 million refugees.
But the vast majority of refugees are not bound for the U.S.
Since November 2013, the UN has identified and referred about 26,500 Syrians for resettlement in the U.S. That is about 0.5 percent of the total number of Syrians who have fled their homeland and fewer than many other countries are set to receive.
Syrian refugees face intense scrutiny before they are allowed to enter the U.S. They are vetted in a process that can take up to 18 months. During this time, they are checked and interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security. The number of Syrians who have completed the review process and arrived in the U.S. is small.
How small? In 2014, the U.S. accepted just 132 Syrian refugees. That was comparable in numbers to Moldovan, Nepali and Russian refugees. It represents fewer than 0.2 percent of the 70,000 refugees who arrived legally in the U.S. following federal rules and was far fewer than the 292,540 refugees offered asylum by the EU in 2015.
The total number of Syrian refugees relocated to the U.S. totaled 2,174 through November 2015, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. That is a number so small as to be almost insignificant. The possibility that a Syrian family might become your neighbor is nearly zero. Syrian refugees represent fewer than 0.0007 percent of the nation’s population.
Furthermore, Syrian refugees aren’t settled just anywhere.

Stirring fear

Recent refugee makes a pot of Syrian coffee in New Jersey. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

After careful vetting, refugees are settled by one of nine agencies: Church World Service, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Episcopal Migration Ministries, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration and Refugee Services, and World Relief.
These agencies build upon personal connection to place Syrians as close as possible to family and people that they know. The fears voiced by Trump, Cruz and others are akin to playing a terror version of the game Six Degrees of Separation. The game is based on the belief that any two people on the Earth are no more than six acquaintances apart. In the terror version, we replace acquaintances with violence and assume our well being is under threat.
And yet, as the White House points out, not one Syrian refugee in the U.S. has been arrested or deported on terror related charges.
The Obama administration hopes to relocate 10,000 additional Syrian refugees in the coming year. This is a plan supported by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Doubts raised by the GOP candidates may be working to slow even these modest goals.
To put this number into context, the Mariel boatlift resettled approximately 125,000 Cubans. And between 1975 and 1995, about 2 million Vietnamese refugees were relocated to the U.S.
Of course, some in the GOP hold views that differ from the candidates, recognizing that welcoming refugees robs ISIS and other groups of their portrayal of the U.S. as an uncaring, unkind place. As Utah Gov. Gary Herbert recently told NPR:

We don’t want to have terror imported to Utah. But we were just a little bit reluctant to use somebody’s religion as the defining description of who can come into a state and who can come into our country and who cannot.

Adopting this attitude would allow us to focus on the concerns that we all share: the free and safe pursuit of happiness.


Jeffrey H. Cohen, Professor of Anthropology, The Ohio State University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Amnesty: Turkey illegally sending Syrians back to war zone

Amnesty International has accused Turkey of forcibly returning thousands of refugees to war-torn Syria. Ankara recently struck a deal with the EU to stem the flow of migrants into Europe.

Rights group Amnesty International says Turkey has illegally returned thousands of Syrian refugees to their war-torn homeland since mid-January, highlighting what the group says are 'fatal flaws' in a recently-agreed refugee deal between Turkey and the European Union.

Turkey recently struck a deal with the EU to take back all migrants and refugees crossing illegally to Greece in exchange for monetary aid, expedited visa-free travel for Turks, and accelerated EU membership talks.

The deal with Ankara however hinges on Turkey being deemed a safe country of asylum, which Amnesty said is clearly not the case. The London-based organization says around 100 Syrian refugees have been forcibly expelled from Turkey each day since the middle of January, flouting international law.

Most of those deported to Syria appear to be unregistered refugees, though Amnesty says it also saw cases of registered Syrians being returned as well.

The rights group based its allegations on testimonies it had gathered in Turkey's southern border provinces.

"In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have willfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Director for Europe and Central Asia.

Amnesty also says Turkey has scaled back the registration of Syrian refugees in the southern provinces, making it impossible for them to access basic services.

"Having witnessed the creation of Fortress Europe, we are now seeing the copycat construction of Fortress Turkey," Dalhuisen said.

Ankara denies

Turkey rejects allegations it is sending Syrians back against their will. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the nation had maintained an "open door" policy for Syrian migrants for five years and has abided by the "non-refoulment" principle of not deporting someone back to a country where they are likely to face persecution.

"None of the Syrians that have demanded protection from our country are being sent back to their country by force, in line with international and national law," a foreign ministry official told news agency Reuters.

The EU-Turkey refugee deal is set to take effect on April 4. Under the agreement, Turkey is supposed to be taking in migrants returned from Greece, but uncertainty remains over how many will be sent back, how they will be processed, and where they will be accommodated.

More than 1.2 million migrants have arrived in the EU since the beginning of 2015, most of whomtraveled across the Aegean Sea to Greece before heading north to countries like Germany and Sweden. The deal aims to close this route

Russian Syria withdrawal: Vladimir Putin is the consummate political gambler

Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham

Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is not an easy politician to read. He is willing to say one thing while his diplomats and military do another – as the long-running conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated. His statements are at the pinnacle of a Russian state propaganda machine shrouding any “truth” in layers of often deceptive assertions.
And, as the announcement on March 14 of a “withdrawal of most of [Russia’s] military group” from Syria demonstrated, he can spring a surprise on both his allies and his foes.

So, does this represent mission accomplished for Putin – as he maintained on Monday (“the tasks … are generally fulfilled”), or is this a sign of Russian weakness, with the costs of military intervention compounded by a shaky economy, the challenge of sanctions on Moscow, and a sharp fall in oil revenues?
Or is Putin just being deceptive, with his air force ready to resume bombing and his advisers ready to support pro-Assad ground offensives – especially if political talks to resolve Syria’s five-year conflict fail in Geneva?

Russia’s short-term goal

The starting point is that Russia’s launch of a massive bombing campaign on September 30 had an immediate objective, rather than a long-term vision. Moscow and Iran, Assad’s other main ally, had agreed in late July that intervention was necessary to prevent the defeat of the regime. They resolved to hold a defence line from the Mediterranean via Syria’s third city Homs to the capital Damascus.

The situation in Syria this month. Spesh531, CC BY

The chief threat to the Syrian military was the rebel blocs which had taken much of the north-west – including Idlib Province – and the south. Those forces were on the verge of advancing on the city of Hama and possibly breaking through in Syria’s largest city Aleppo, divided since 2012.
Russia insisted its objective was to defeat the Islamic State, but meanwhile it devoted more than 80% of its attacks to opposition-held territory. On the ground, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah put in commanders and troops and oversaw Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani militias. Five offensives were launched against rebels and one against the Islamic State.
Five months later, the main objective has been secured. With rebels on the defensive not only against the pro-regime assaults but also Kurdish attacks, the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad does not have to fear the opposition at Damascus’s door for now. However, the gains of rebel and Islamic State territory are still limited.

But no long-term vision?

Analysts have speculated that Putin’s intervention has long-term goals in changing the balance of power in the Middle East. Some have placed it in a global geopolitical struggle, linked to front-line contests such as Ukraine. Others have focused more on specific interests such as Russia’s establishment of an airbase in western Syria to accompany the naval base in Tartous that Moscow developed from the 1970s.
That speculation probably says more about the pondering of analysts, than about Putin’s calculations. Without a stable and supportive regime in Damascus, any long-term Russian military position is tenuous. There is no hope of a badly-damaged Syrian economy offering any trade or investment advantages.
Even the Russian-Iranian alliance is tenuous. While an alliance with Tehran can be a position against other powers in the Middle East, Moscow has to balance this with consideration of how far it can challenge the West. That is why Russia maintained its position within the 5+1 powers pressing the Islamic Republic for a nuclear deal and why it has stalled for years on delivery of advanced military equipment to Tehran.
Russia’s military gamble in September was significant, but it was not strategic. This was a tactical decision to buy time. The same can be said for Russia’s initiative to renew political talks, albeit on its own terms with no commitment to Assad’s removal.

Costs of intervention

Any advantages from military intervention and political success have to be balanced against the expense. The headline cost of Russia’s airstrikes and support operations is estimated at US$720m to US$1.2 billion per month. On its own, that expenditure is currently affordable.
But that cost is not “on its own”. It is in the wider context of economic difficulty. The combination of international sanctions and falling oil prices has cost Russia 1.5% of its GDP according to a former finance minister. Real income is declining for the first time since 2000.
The cost can be borne in the short-term. But Putin is facing a long-term burden, given that the Assad regime and foreign allies are unlikely to vanquish the opposition rebels completely and possibly not even the Islamic State.

Will Moscow dump Assad?

The only way out of Russia’s dilemma is to offer the prospect of a political resolution – but that in turn rests on a commitment for the departure of Assad and his closest advisers. The opposition rebel bloc will not settle for anything less.

Trading again. EPA/Youssef Badawi

Putin recognises this. That is why he timed his announcement for the day that talks reopened in Geneva. That is why he declared: “Efficient work of our military has created conditions for the start of a peace process.”
That is why he made no mention of Assad in his statement on Monday.
The declaration of withdrawal is not a sudden declaration that Assad must go. That would give up some of Russia’s leverage in a political process where it has manoeuvred Washington into a partnership. Instead – as he has done since October over the question of Assad’s future – Putin is buying a bit more time.
There will now be the show of “proximity talks” in Geneva, with UN envoy Staffan de Mistura shuttling between regime and opposition rebel delegations. Moscow can boost its public line of leadership in the fight against the Islamic State with airstrikes on the jihadists. It can be assured that rebels, not wanting to be blamed for any ceasefire violation, will not threaten the regime’s immediate survival.

Tactical victory

Buying time has been Moscow’s approach in Syria since the start of the uprising since 2011. On three occasions, Russia and Iran have saved the Assad regime: in mid-2012, with the Syrian army on the point of collapse; in mid-2013, when Hezbollah intervened to check the rebels on the ground; and in September 2015 when it launched its decisive air campaign.
Putin has also gambled on the spur of important moments. In August 2013, Russia was concerned that the Assad regime’s miscalculation, launching chemical attacks near Damascus that killed more than 1,400 people, would bring decisive Western and Arab military intervention.
So Moscow came up with the idea of an alliance with Washington for Assad to hand over his chemical weapons stocks. That process was a bit of an illusion: the Syrian military has continued to use chemicals such as chlorine in its bombing. However, the tactical pay-off was not illusory – it aligned Russia in a partnership with the US, rather than facing an ultimatum from Washington and its allies.
Two-and-a-half years later, the situation has changed – but the game is the same. Through his diplomatic and military steps, Putin continues to put Washington in a position of reacting to, rather than seizing the initiative.
Now he has done so again. The Russian “withdrawal” will not bring a strategic victory. It probably will not even save Assad. But it allows Moscow the space to consider its next move for a preferred political outcome – or even an acceptable state of tension if that outcome is impossible.


Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

What Quagmire? Even in Withdrawal, Russia Stays a Step Ahead

WASHINGTON — For five years, President Obama has steadfastly rejected the argument that the United States could intervene in Syria, alter the equation on the battlefield and avoid being sucked into a quagmire. Now, it appears that President Vladimir V. Putin has done exactly that.
The Russian leader’s announcement on Monday that he would withdraw the bulk of his forces from Syria not only caught the White House by surprise, it seemed to belie Mr. Obama’s regular warnings that Russia would be severely damaged by its military adventurism. And it reinforced the sense that Mr. Putin has managed to maintain the initiative in Syria against an American president who wants to keep the war at arm’s length.
The White House on Tuesday cautiously welcomed Russia’s latest move, even as it continued to criticize its intervention, and administration officials struggled to understand Mr. Putin’s motives for acting now.
“The Russia military intervention propped up Assad and only made it more difficult for that political resolution to be reached,” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. “If they continue to follow through,” he added, “then that would be a positive outcome.”
Administration officials cautioned that they would need to see further evidence of Russian equipment leaving Syria before they concluded that the withdrawal was genuine. On Tuesday, the Pentagon said the American military had seen fewer than 10 Russian planes depart for Russia and no major troop movements.
Still, American officials said there were reasons to believe that Mr. Putin would follow through. He has tied his credibility to the fragile cease-fire now in place, as well as to the peace talks that resumed this week in Geneva. He is eager to ease tensions with the European Union over a migrant crisis that the Europeans blame partly on him. And he is impatient with Mr. Assad, whose forces have been unable to hold territory in Syria’s west, despite Russian air support.
Mr. Putin, these officials said, had reached a turning point in his campaign, where the costs, domestically and internationally, of staying engaged outweighed the advantages. Moreover, the Russians had largely achieved their primary goal: preserving the Assad administration and giving Moscow a seat at the table for any political settlement.
For Mr. Obama, Russia’s decision is a relief insofar as it eases the pressure on him to increase American support for Syria’s moderate opposition, something he has long resisted. The administration wants Russia to play a role in the political negotiations because it wields influence over Mr. Assad’s government, and analysts predicted the withdrawal would force Mr. Assad to make concessions he was not otherwise willing to make.
But the announcement is a reminder that since September, when Russia thrust itself into the conflict, Mr. Putin has consistently seemed a step ahead of the United States on Syria. His withdrawal could also prolong the American-led campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, because while Moscow trained most of its firepower against anti-government forces, it also struck Islamic State targets.
The Pentagon spokesman, Peter Cook, said on Tuesday that Russian airstrikes had occurred over the last 24 hours, and those airstrikes were carried out against the Islamic State.
“Suddenly, the Russians are no longer as available for the fight against ISIS,” said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “That would seem to put a longer timetable on this war and a greater burden on the United States and the West.”
Mr. Earnest said the United States had received no “direct advance notice” of the decision from Russia — wording careful enough that it did not dispel questions among analysts about whether Russia had coordinated its announcement with the United States. A senior administration official said that there was no “strategic grand bargain” between the United States and Russia on Syria.
Mr. Putin made the announcement just before he got on the phone with Mr. Obama for a call that had been scheduled at the request of the White House.
Mr. Obama, in an interview last week with The Atlantic magazine, repeated his assertion that Russia’s intervention was a blunder — one that betrayed weakness rather than strength. To argue that Russia was in a stronger position in Syria since it had intervened, he said, was to “fundamentally misunderstand the nature of power in foreign affairs or in the world generally.”
“They are overextended. They are bleeding,” Mr. Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. “And their economy has contracted for three years in a row, drastically.”
Experts on Russia, however, said there was little evidence that Mr. Putin was withdrawing because of economic or political pressure. The Russian press has portrayed the operation as a victory — a “mission accomplished” — with relatively few Russian casualties.
“This doesn’t look like a quagmire to me,” said Angela E. Stent, a professor of government and Russia expert at Georgetown University. “If they had been more ambitious in their goals — to destroy the Islamic State or to keep Syria whole — the outcome might be different,” she added.
Those are the goals of the Obama administration, which is why some analysts said it made little sense to compare Russia and the United States. Russia intervened in Syria on behalf of a sovereign government, while the Obama administration’s debate has been over how aggressively to get involved in efforts to uproot that government. And the United States could never have taken part, as Russia did, in a campaign that resulted in the kind of civilian casualties inflicted by the Syrian government’s forces.
“He clearly set out to buy time for Assad, and that worked,” said Derek Chollet, a former State Department and White House official in the Obama administration, referring to Mr. Putin. “But he made the situation in Syria demonstratively worse. When you go in without scruples, it’s fairly easy to succeed.”
The Russians, Mr. Chollet noted, have a long record of surprising the United States with tactical moves, going back to their invasion of Afghanistan. But those moves are not always successful in the long run. Other analysts, however, said that in one respect at least, Russia’s limited operation exposed a fallacy in the president’s argument: that any military involvement in Syria would inevitably lead to deeper engagement.
“Syria doesn’t have to be a slippery slope,” Mr. Tabler said. “Putin actually demonstrated you could intervene, bomb, put troops on the ground and still get out. They effectively changed the situation on the ground, and kept the regime from collapsing.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Obama, Putin discuss Russia's 'partial withdrawal' from Syria

The White House said Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin discussed Russia's planned military drawdown in Syria on Monday, hours after a shock announcement that could signal a new phase in the five-year-old conflict.
"They discussed President Putin's announcement today of a partial withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria and next steps required to fully implement the cessation of hostilities," the White House said in a statement.
US officials offered a cautious initial assessment of Putin's decision to withdraw "the main part" of its military contingent from Tuesday.
"At this point, we are going to see how things play out over the next few days," a senior administration official told AFP.
Putin launched air strikes against rebel positions in September followed by a massive troop deployment.
That turned the tide of a long and brutal war in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's favor, rescuing his regime from the brink of collapse.
Putin's announcement appeared timed to coincide with peace talks in Geneva that have been dominated by a disagreement over Assad's fate.
The timing and the suddenness of the announcement will raise questions about whether Russia remains steadfast in its support for Assad.
Moscow has long refused calls from opposition groups, the United States and key European countries for Assad to go as part of a negotiated transition.
"A political transition is required to end the violence in Syria," Obama said.
A recent "cessation of hostilities" has been frequently breached but, Obama said, led to a "much-needed reduction in violence."
The White House sought to turn the screws on Assad, just as his backing from Russia was called into question.
"Continuing offensive actions by Syrian regime forces risk undermining both the Cessation of Hostilities and the UN-led political process," the White House cited Obama as saying.
"The president also noted some progress on humanitarian assistance efforts in Syria, but emphasized the need for regime forces to allow unimpeded access for humanitarian assistance delivery to the agreed-upon locations, notably Daraya."

AFP