Fleeing Hell

In the immortal words of Monty Python’s hit movie Spamalot, “Run away! Run Away!” This seems to be the advice being followed by great hordes of the Syrian and Iraqi civilian population. And who can blame them, with the insane conglomeration of warring factions in both countries. When the city where you live is being hit indiscriminately with barrel bombs from your own government, and blown up by artillery from forces opposing the government, as well as occupation by radical fanatics intent on decapitating those they don’t like with a dull butcher knife and burning people alive in cages, it’s time to get out of Dodge!

Just take what’s left of your family, stuff some clean underwear, a toothbrush, some baby formula, and your life savings in a daypack and head out. But where to? That is the big question. You can’t go to Iraq from Syria; it’s no better than where you come from. South? That’s all desert. The chances of making it to civilization are slim in that direction. Israel? Fat chance they would let you stay. North is the sea and Turkey. Beyond lies civilization – or something far more civilized than the war-torn hell back home.

So, they take their chances crossing the Mediterranean in flimsy, overcrowded boats. Some make it, some don’t. The lucky ones arrive in a country that wants nothing to do with them. Other countries, like Germany, welcome them with open arms – and open checkbooks. All they have to do is get there. That turns out to be a major obstacle. Most of the countries along the way don’t want the refugees to pass. Why is anybody’s guess.

I read and hear comments all the time like, “most of the refugees look like able-bodied young men. Why don’t they fight for their own homeland?” Also, “why should we allow more Muslims in our country? They will just bring their conflict here!”

Maybe those who have never fled wars, tyranny, and oppression will never understand the situation. It is far too easy to sit on our easy chairs in front of our flat screen TVs watching the plight of these people and go “tisk-tisk, too bad” or form easy opinions.

Those who have, or have family who has fled their homeland at one time know the heart-wrenching choice that is made. It is no easy decision to leave everything they have and everything they know just to wind up where everything is foreign – the customs, the money, the religion, the language, the people, and even the cities – and arrive with nothing only to be at the mercy of complete strangers and a strange government.

But is it fair to expect only a select few countries to accept these refugees? The numbers I have seen are on the order of some 50,000 to England, and France, 10,000 to Norway, 800,000 to Germany…. There is even a push for the US to take in refugees.

Why has Europe and now the US been singled out to receive these people? Why not countries closer to their homeland, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait, Oman, Iran, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, or the Sudan? Why are Asian and South American countries not taking in any of these refugees? What about Australia, and Japan? Can’t the Russian Federation take any? Why must Europe be the snake that swallows the cow?

Make no mistake about it; I know well why these people are fleeing and how desperate they are to settle in a stable place. What I can’t understand is why the one global agency that purports to represent all the governments of the planet, and increasingly sticks its nose in the sovereignty of other countries has done nothing to alleviate the refugee problem. Why can’t the United Nations create a program to equitably distribute the refugees around the globe? With all the money we give the UN to waste propping up dictatorships and sending aid to countries that only confiscate it and sell it on the black market, why can’t the UN do something that is well within its charter and help the refugees? Can anyone tell me just what the United Nations is good for?