Intersections of Syria’s Refugee Crisis and Politics of Vulnerability
While it was anti-Assad groups who fought hard against the Syrian government and its allies and helped to escalate the Syrian Civil War into a multi-participant conflict, it is the Syrian population that suffered most. Beginning as one wave of protests among many during the Arab Spring in 2011, the situation in Syria has devolved into total war, leading to not only dysfunction of the entire state but also a humanitarian catastrophe. 9.3 million Syrian refugees living near the battle zones have fled in hope of shelter and resettlement, overwhelming host countries who already lack incentives to accommodate more refugees. In times of crisis, both refugees seeking help and major host countries utilized the concept of vulnerability as rhetoric yet politicized its meaning in different ways to defend their own interests and achieve their goals. To understand the plight of Syrian refugees and the reasons behind Europe’s close-door policy, it is necessary to examine different discourse that the two sides used and find the intersections of refugee crisis and politics of vulnerability.
According to data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the scale of Syrian displacement is incredibly large: by early 2015, 40% of the country’s population were in need of humanitarian protection, a figure that has not been seen since the end of the Second World War. Another 4.5 million Syrians crossed borders to seek safety in neighboring Arab countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt while many have ventured as far as Nordic Europe. With alarming speed, Syria became the largest refugee-producing country and the human cost of the civil war rose with every day that passed. [1] Another aspect worth noting is the complex displacement patterns. Shifting conflict zones have resulted in multiple displacements; further, existing religious, ethnic conflicts and political confrontations remain, increasing the number of minorities fleeing domestic human rights abuses; and, the rise of extremist militant organizations and their brutal behavioral patterns have led to further displacement. [2]
Indeed, Syria is in ruins, no longer capable of ensuring the safety of its citizens who have to escape and find new homes by themselves. One discourse that refugees used when asking for humanitarian assistance and asylum was to appeal to the concept of vulnerability, their increasing susceptibility of exposure to harm in their home country, both physically and emotionally [3] while emphasizing the fact that under given sociopolitical circumstances, their lives are more vulnerable and in need of protection. Indeed, it is very hard for the international community to ignore their demands, especially given the global scale of refugee crisis — “while Syrian displacement is the most visible manifestation of this trend, it is far from the only case. And the rarely acknowledged fact behind these numbers is that most of the world’s 60 million refugees and internally displaced people have been uprooted for a long time.” [4] This diffusion pattern of refugee crisis across the Middle East as a result of domestic conflicts parallels the political learning of democratization among different countries in the Arab Spring, reflecting the regional dynamic in politics of the Middle East.
On the other hand, refugee movements from Syria have turned out to be a nightmare for host governments in the Middle East and in Europe, exacerbated by the protracted nature of the conflict. Initially, observers assumed that the Syrian displacement generated by uprising was temporary in nature and that the Assad regime would simply be replaced by a reformist one, “mirroring the transition that had just taken place in Tunisia and Egypt” [5]. However, the Syrian civil war turned out to be unconventional due to its multiple belligerents, savagery and diverse mix of interests. By now, damage is irrevocable, and it seems like ending the war is a necessary condition, though not a sufficient one, to alleviate the refugee crisis. Many political scientists have made predictions about how the war might end. In his book Syria in Ruins, David Sorenson argues that since the Syrian civil war is more of an ethnic and ideological conflict rather than a secessionist conflict, the government is more likely to win. However, it is also possible that negotiated settlement will not be achieved and that Syria will be partitioned along lines separating different ethnicities or language groups. Insurgent armies will probably push back ISIL on Syria’s frontiers and take the territory themselves while Kurdish groups will seek to establish an independent Kurdistan.
Though not all observers agree with Sorenson prediction, convention says that the refugee crisis will continue its protracted and costly trajectory. The existing international system to accommodate refugees is far from effective. While Europe used to be home to most of the world’s open borders, terrorist attacks in 2015 gave rise to efforts halting migrants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and increasing surveillance of refugees. The hurdle for accommodation is largely cultural and one can say that Samuel Huntington’s argument of the clash of civilizations accurately captures one difficulty of accepting refugees. Countries like the Netherlands and Germany shut their doors as citizens stood up to their countries’ vulnerability to the “invasion” of “foreign blood” and threatened national security. Some believed xenophobic and racist sentiments could be justified by the terrorist attack in Paris, the killing of a woman by a 21-year-old Syrian refugee in Germany and so many other cases. In the Middle East, the environment of Syria’s neighboring countries was not welcoming to refugees either. Even after acceptance, Syrian refugees cannot receive full-fledged refugee status because “with the exception of Turkey, none of the other host countries are signatories of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees” [7]. This also means that Syrians refugees are not guaranteed proper healthcare, working permits, and are in the constant danger of deportation. They live in the form of bare life and are having a hard time integrating into their new communities.
While European countries’ close-door policy for refugees seems rational to many policy makers, the extreme level of refugees’ vulnerability makes humanitarian support one of the most pressing emergencies. Both sides appealed to the concept of vulnerability to defend their own interests: to Syrian refugees, their individual vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of human life susceptible to exploitation that deserves humanitarian care, especially when their lives face more danger than the others in times of war; but to Europeans, nation-states can also become vulnerable when national security is threatened and when refugees turn out to be a burden of the economy, whose very existence also requires more surveillance and policing. It is in those aspects that we see the politicization of the meaning of vulnerability and the complicated nature of vulnerability politics. There seems to be no simple solution that resolves all dilemmas at once. In vulnerability politics, the relationship of vulnerability and care is always a complicated one — vulnerability can become a societal burden while care is not always benign as it gives rise to increasing surveillance becomes “armed love”.
The current Syrian refugee crisis is a result of Syria’s failure to protect its citizens and the irresponsiveness of the international community to provide sufficient protection. Refugees appealed to the concept of vulnerability, telling their stories of lives stripped of basic human rights but were not able to receive enough protection in Europe and in the Middle East. It is hard to say whether the rhetoric of Europe’s vulnerability to terrorism and potentially extremist ideas is legitimate or just an excuse for keeping out refugees whose lives are on the line. Besides even the UN humanitarian interventions to protect Syrians were described by many as both a failure and a mistake. Though resolving Syria’s refugee crisis requires continuing and long-time efforts, one way of applying vulnerability politics that can potentially lead to relief of the current situation would be to find a middle ground, properly mobilizing refugees’ vulnerability in order to press for fundamental changes to our system of global governance and humanitarian support while ensuring that public security will not be severely compromised.
Notes
[1] Karim Makdisi and Vijay Prashad, Land of Blue Helmets, (Oakland: University of California Press), 360.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Elizabeth G. Ferris, The Consequences of Chaos, (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press), 2.
[4] Stephen Dillon, “The Concept of Vulnerability and Its Relationship to Security”, The New Collection (2015): 40. Accessed March 22, 2017.
http://mcr.new.ox.ac.uk/journal/NewCollection2015.pdf#page=45
[5] Ibid 33.
[6] David S. Sorenson, Syria in Ruins, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2016), 131.
[7] Ibid 35.
