Refugee crisis “Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon are likely to falter”

The Obama administration ridiculed for not flying to the aid of its European allies, Turkish, Jordanian or Lebanese overwhelmed by the flood of refugees and migrants.

The United States is under pressure to lead an international emergency to the crisis of Syrian refugees, otherwise, are alarmed experts, to see collapse of the Middle East and the EU European.

The Obama administration is no longer vilified for months for refusing military intervention in Syria major, but is now ridiculed for not flying to the aid of its European allies, Turkish, Jordanian or Lebanese overwhelmed the flow of refugees and migrants.

Stressing that “the current refugee crisis is far from the worst since the end of World War II,” the former ambassador of the United States in Iraq and Syria, Ryan Crocker, said that this potential influx of millions of displaced “is not a problem for the Middle east, or Europe, (but) a problem for the world and for America.”

Worse, the former diplomat gives echo to the concerns of US officials that evoke recent weeks in a private threat “existential” on Europe and he fears too that “the flow of refugees to undo the European Union as a political construction” . As for the “frontline States, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, may falter,” he warned. Indeed, King Abdullah II, the Jordanian kingdom welcomes hundreds of thousands of Syrians, had sounded the alarm to the breaking point.

So Mr. Crocker calls the US government to organize as soon as possible “a world summit on refugees” because “neither the region (the Middle East, ed), nor Europe can overcome” the crisis. But according to the US ambassador, the Obama administration has so far sin by “lack of leadership” while only America “can make the difference” to resolve the crisis.

“Global crisis”

Accused by his opponents of conducting a foreign policy “isolationist” towards the Arab world and Europe and not wanting to meddle in regional armed conflicts, the Democratic administration relentlessly defended its diplomatic and humanitarian commitment to Syria.

John Kerry even acknowledged Monday night for the first time, that the refugee crisis was a “global challenge” and not only “regional” for the Middle East and Europe. He admitted that he now was a “test for all of us” instead of “someone else’s problem.”
Faced with the Republican Congress, Mr. Kerry, who is sponsoring with Moscow a cease-fire and the delivery of humanitarian aid in Syria, had boasted last week that Washington was “the largest donor” for humanitarian Syria with “more than 5.1 billion dollars,” released in five years.

President Obama also pledged last fall that the US welcomes 100,000 refugees of all nationalities by September 30, 10,000 Syrians. For the year 2016, they are for now just 942 Syrians have crossed all admission steps on American soil, according to official figures.

“You can not exercise leadership if you are not a leader,” tackle Eric Schwartz, a former National Security Council of the White House and former head of the political department of state for refugees and migration.

The American Association Human Rights First makes the same basic criticism, stressing the “need for US leadership” in an murderous field report on the “deterioration of the situation of Syrian refugees.” The author of the report, Eleanor Acer, denounced “the failure to resolve the refugee crisis (that) undermines the interests of national security of the United States, threatening the stability in the forefront of the country and contribute to the disunity of ‘Europe”.

It demands “the US government a welcome goal of 100,000 Syrians in 2017, a commitment that better reflects the tradition of American leadership and the interests of national security.”

Moreover, agrees Mr. Schwartz, “this initiative will certainly encourage other countries to do more.”

Translation of the article published on L’Orient-Le Jour website