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Middle East and Europe: impact and prospects

I had the privilege this morning of speaking today by Skype to the Ambassadors’ Council convened at the Macedonian Foreign Ministry in Skopje. These are the notes I used:

1. First let me thank the organizers, in particular Ambassador Abdulkadar Memedi and Edvard Mitevski, for this opportunity. It is rare indeed that I get to talk about my two favorite parts of the world: Europe and the Middle East.

2. My focus today will be on the latter, as I am confident that Europeans—a category that in my way of thinking includes all the citizens of Macedonia—know more than I do about the impact of the refugee crisis on your part of the world.

3. But big as it looms for you, the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from the Greater Middle East is a fraction of a much larger problem.

4. There are 4.8 million refugees from Syria in neighboring countries, the largest number in Turkey but millions also in Lebanon and Jordan. Upwards of 8.7 million will be displaced within Syrian by the end of the year. 13.5 million are said to be in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria.

5. The number of refugees leaving Syria has leveled off, but asylum applications in Europe are well above 1 million and still rising, albeit at a declining rate.

6. The U.S. is committed to taking only 10,000 Syrians. I don’t anticipate that our politics will allow a lot more anytime soon, though eventually we will have many more arrive through family reunification and other modalities.

7. The 1.5 million people you saw flow through Macedonia over the past year or so were the relatively fortunate Syrians, not the most unfortunate. Moreover, most who have arrived in Europe are male. If their asylum applications are successful, that will lead to large numbers of family members eventually joining them.

8. The vital question for me is this: what are the prospects for ending the wars that are tearing Syria to shreds? And what are the prospects for other potential sources of migrants and refugees from Iraq, from Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya?

9. More than five years after Bashar al Assad’s attempted violent repression of the nonviolent demonstrations in his country, prospects for peace still look dim.

10. The Russians and Iranians, whose support to Assad has been vital to his survival, show no signs of letting up and have in fact doubled down on their bad bet.

11. The Iranians have committed Lebanese Hizbollah, Iraqi Shia militias and their own Revolutionary Guard to the fight, not to mention Afghan and other Shia fighters.

12. The Russians have not only redoubled their air attacks but also added flights from Iran, now suspended, as well as cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea. Moscow has now killed more civilians, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, than the Islamic State.

13. The Americans continue to refuse to fight Assad, Iran, or Russia. President Obama lacks both legal authorization and popular support to attack them. Americans want him to focus exclusively on the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, which is what he is doing, apart from assistance to some Syrian opposition forces willing to join in the fight against extremists.

14. Donald Trump would certainly follow the same policy, perhaps redoubling efforts against the Islamic State and looking for opportunities for cooperation with Russia. Hillary Clinton has pledged to look at other options like protected areas or no-fly zones, but it is not clear that she will pursue them.

15. The space for moderates in Syria is shrinking. Violence always polarizes, as you know only too well. In addition, the Americans are restraining the forces that they have equipped and trained from attacking the Syrian army. They want moderates focused exclusively on fighting the Islamic State.

16. This morning, Turkish forces entered Syria at Jarablus on the Euphrates, in support of Arab and Turkman forces aiming to deprive the Islamic State of its last border point and block the expansion of Kurdish forces from taking the last stretch of the Turkish/Syrian border they don’t control.

17. When will it all end? I don’t know, but I think it likely to end at best not in a clear victory of one side or another but rather in a fragmented and semi-stable division of areas of control.

18. The Syrian government will control most of what Assad refers to as “useful Syria”: the western coast and the central axis from Damascus through Homs and Hama, with Idlib and Aleppo still in doubt.

19. The opposition will likely control part of the south along the Jordanian border as well as a wedge of the north, including a piece of the border with Turkey stretching from Azaz to Jarablus.

20. The Kurds will control the rest of the border with Turkey. Raqqa and Deir Azzour are still up for grabs, with the likely outcome opposition in the former and government in the latter.

21. That is the likely best. Will that end the refugee problem?

22. I think not. Nothing about this fragmented outcome is likely to make it attractive for Syrians to return home. Security will remain a serious problem and little funding will be available for reconstruction. Syria will remain unstable for years to come.

23. What about other parts of the Greater Middle East?

24. While 5.8 million Afghan refugees have returned home since 2002, there are still 2.5 million in Pakistan and Iran. That is an enormous reservoir of potential migrants, some of whom might head towards Europe if conditions in the host countries deteriorate.

25. Inside Afghanistan, conditions are already deteriorating, with the Taliban challenging Afghan forces in key districts around the country.

26. Iraq has 3.5 million people internally displaced. The planned attack on Mosul, which Prime Minister Abadi has promised before the end of the year, will displace more than a million more. While the UN is building camps to accommodate them, I won’t be surprised if some fraction ends up outside the country.

27. Yemen is of less concern to Europeans because relatively few refugees have managed to make the journey, but conditions there are deteriorating from an already disastrous state with the renewal of the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes and Houthi responses.

28. Conditions in Libya are improving modestly with the defeat of the Islamic State at Sirte and at least until recently the growing authority of the UN-sponsored National Unity Government, but there are already large numbers of Libyans outside the country and many sub-Saharan Africans already in Libya looking to cross the Mediterranean.

29. While no one is yet focused on Egypt, economic and political conditions there are deteriorating and could well lead to an exodus in the next year or two. Nor are economic and political conditions in Turkey looking good. I imagine Europe is already seeing some well-educated Turks looking to escape for a while.

30. So to make a long story short, whatever modest progress Europe has had in stemming the tide of migrants in the past few months, I won’t be surprised to see a renewed influx next spring and summer, if not before.

31. How should Europe respond?

32. First, by absorbing as many asylum seekers as the individual countries think they can. The more economically advanced parts of Europe are suffering rapid demographic decline. They need young immigrants to help pay their social costs.

33. Angela Merkel is no dummy. She knows what Germany needs, even if it is proving politically difficult.

34. Second, it seems to me Europe should be asking itself whether it should be doing more to help stabilize the situation in Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

35. We are all shy of nation-building in the aftermath of the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles, but is there a real choice or are we compelled, if we want to prevent them from leaving, to do our best to improve conditions in refugee home countries in order to motivate them to stay?

36. This is particularly relevant to the Balkans, which benefited from massive internationally sponsored state-building enterprises in the 1990s.

37. And yes, nation-building begins at home, which means Macedonia and other transit countries will need to have in place the border, administrative, and security mechanisms required to deal with large numbers of migrants, along with the equally vital European and NATO cooperation.

38. Third, I think we have to begin to recognize that our international institutions for managing crises of the sort we face now are stretched too thin and possibly close to the breaking point.

39. The traditional annual appeals and ad hoc programs in response to crisis may not be adequate to meet current needs, especially as we enter a period in which we can expect climate change to make parts of the Middle East uninhabitable even if war does not.

40. NASA reported in March that the Levant is suffering the worst drought in 900 years, and temperatures throughout the Middle East have reached record levels this summer.

41. We need to be thinking about what kind of international institutions will enable a more rational and effective approach to migration problems that show no sign of disappearing any time soon.

42. We also need to deal more effectively with climate change, which is becoming a worldwide source of unnatural disasters. We suffered one recently in Baton Rouge, Louisiana: an unprecedented rainstorm.

43. Macedonia has twice in recent years proved its capacity in dealing with refugees. It dealt with the exodus from Kosovo in 1999 humanely and successfully.

44. It has also dealt with the Middle Easterners, who in some ways are a greater challenge, even as Macedonia’s own political system has come under enormous strain from internal problems.

45. You will need courage and cooperation from your neighbors and other European partners to manage the migration problems I think you will face in the coming decade.

46. I’ll be interested to hear how others on the panel see the situation and prospects for a successful and humane outcome.

Questions ranged far and wide: the relevance of trans-Atlantic relations to the Middle East, whether Russia and Iran are likely caught in a Syrian quagmire, what will happen after the US election on Israel/Palestine issues. Ambassador Memedi made a key point in summing up: Macedonia’s interethnic cohesion and institutional capacities have been vital to meeting the migration challenge in 2015 and 2016. My hat is off to those who have made it so!