The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Causes, Effects, Policy

1. Introduction: Proximal and Deep Causes of the Syrian Refugee Crisis

The Syrian refugee crisis is a humanitarian catastrophe that began in 2011, with the start of the Syrian Civil War. The Syrian Civil War itself can be examined as an offshoot of the so-called Arab Spring, which also began in 2011. The Arab Spring, which began with the ouster of Tunisian dictator ben Ali in early 2011, eventually spread to many Arab countries in the form of social media-abetted popular unrest (Anthony). Syria was an obvious conflagration point for the Arab Spring, given that Syria was under the rule of second-generation dictator Bashar al-Assad, son of Hafez al-Assad (Ali; Anderson; Jones; Totten). 

The extent of the Syrian refugee crisis is directly related to the factors responsible for the intensity of the Syrian Civil War itself. Syria contains many ethnic and sectarian rifts; to begin with, the ruling Assad family and some of its closest supporters belong to the minority Alawite sect of Islam, whereas the majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims (Ali; Anderson; Jones; Totten).. Ethnically, Syria is divided between Arabs, Kurds, and Turks, with the Assad family being Arabs but many important figures in the anti-Assad movement being Kurds (Ali; Anderson; Jones; Totten).. The ethnic diversity of Syria is, in some respects, a legacy of the boundaries drawn after the First World War. At that time, Syria and many Arab countries were provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The defeat of the Ottomans meant that the British—in collusion with the French, and with the tacit support of the other Great Powers—was able to redraw the map of the Middle East, resulting in nations (such as Syria) that had no organic history within their proposed boundaries, but were collections of disparate tribes that had been under the Ottoman yoke (Kaya; Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi; Masters; Palmer).

Therefore, an analysis of the Syrian refugee crisis can actually be antedated to 1918. As formerly Ottoman lands passed into British and French hands, the resulting national boundaries reflected Western interests more than the logical boundaries of organic nation-states (Palmer). Thus, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and other countries came into being out of whole cloth. In Syria, national boundaries emplaced Alawites and Sunnis, Kurds and Arabs, and other disparate peoples into the same polity, resulting in nearly an unbroken century of turmoil, dating from 1918. During its entire history as an independent country, Syria has never once been under truly democratic rule; rather, it has passed from strongman to strongman, with tyranny used to bind together peoples who, left to themselves, would be unlikely to want to occupy a nation-state together (Duval; MacKenzie; Neer and O'toole; Richard). 

The Arab Spring is itself partly an outcome of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, an invasion that deposed a long-standing dictator (Saddam Hussein) but that also fomented general chaos in the region, a chaos that has informed both democratic and anti-democratic impulses associated with the Arab Spring (Anderson; Barkey; Duval; Galen; Jones; MacKenzie; Neer and O'toole; Richard; Totten). By toppling the first domino in Iraq, the U.S. has been partly responsible for macro-level developments throughout the Arab World, and in this sense is responsible for the Syrian Civil War (Anderson; Barkey; Duval; Galen; Jones; MacKenzie; Neer and O'toole; Richard; Totten).

In 2011, the Arab Spring came to the door of Bashar al-Assad, the son of deceased Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. The al-Assad family represented the Ba’ath Party, the same party responsible for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The al-Assad family imposed a fig leaf of secular and socialist rule on what was a classic dictatorship (Ali; Anderson; Jones; Totten). Indeed, for the al-Assads, such a dictatorship was necessary, because, as Alawis, they were of a different religious sect than 80% of their compatriots and therefore in a precarious position.     

The Syrian Civil War has, from its beginning, played out on both sectarian and ethnic fault lines. Because the al-Assads were both secular and Alawi, the initial popular resistance to Bashar al-Assad was couched in terms of the resistance of Syria’s Sunni Muslims. As time went on, the numerous Kurds of Syria also saw an opportunity to win some autonomy from the Arab rule imposed from Damascus. The Kurds of Syria are essentially indistinguishable from the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey—all of whom, instead of being given their own state at the end of the First World War, found themselves scattered across Iran, Turkey, Syrian, Iran, and Iraq because of the exigencies of postwar British foreign policy (Ali; Ghosh; Gunter "The Kurdish Spring"; Gunter "Iraq, Syria, Isis and the Kurds: Geostrategic Concerns for the Us and Turkey"; Gunter "Blood and Belief: The Pkk and the Kurdish Fight for Independence"; Kirişci and Winrow; Laciner and Bal; Natali; Stansfield; Taşpınar; Yarkın; Zheger).   

As if the divides within Syria were not threatening enough, the situation was further complicated by foreign powers. The rule of the al-Assad family was a thorn in the side of the Turkish government, while the al-Assads had long been clients of Russia (and, before Russia, the Soviet Union) (Ali; Barkey; Gunter "Iraq, Syria, Isis and the Kurds: Geostrategic Concerns for the Us and Turkey"). The rule of Hafez al-Assad had been rendered possible by the support of the Soviet Union, which sent Damascus arms and money. After the 2001 election of Tukey’s Ak Party, a religiously oriented party dominated by Sunni Muslims and hostile to sects such as the Alawite sect, Turkey became more of a foe of Syria (Duran). Even before the election of the Ak Party, Turkish governments had chafed at Hafez al-Assad, who had given shelter to Kurdish separatists who sought to carve out a Kurdish homeland from Turkey (Ali; Gunter "Iraq, Syria, Isis and the Kurds: Geostrategic Concerns for the Us and Turkey"). Hafez al-Assad saw these renegade Kurds as tools to be used against Turkey, which shared a border with Syria and which, in the tumultuous years at the end of the First World War, had taken some land (the Hatay Province) that Syria considered its own (Kirişci and Winrow).

The Syrian refugee crisis is, by definition, the exodus of 6 million people from within Syria. The reason that this refugee crisis exists is that the Syrian Civil War had lasted for 5 years, and the reason for the longevity of the Syrian Civil War is that Syria is both internally and externally torn. Syria contains many ethnic and sectarian factions that are all, in their own way, entrenched; meanwhile, the jockeying of powers such as Russia and Turkey means that Syria’s belligerents can draw upon reservoirs of support in order to keep fighting. Russia, for example, engaged in a substantial bombing campaign through Syria, whereas the Turkish government has been caught arming ISIS militants in order to exploit the antipathy between ISIS and the Syrian Kurds (Gunter "Iraq, Syria, Isis and the Kurds: Geostrategic Concerns for the Us and Turkey"; Sekulow et al.; Terrill). 

These kinds of developments explain why the Syrian refugee crisis exists. Elsewhere—for example, in Egypt and Tunisia—the Arab Spring brought regime change. Despite ongoing conflict in these countries, there are no refugee crises there, because power has changed hands. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad remains in power, and, with the occasional assistance of Russia, is fighting to hold on to this dictatorship (Ali; Duval; Galen; Gavlak; MacKenzie; Richard; Sinaria Abdel and Haidar Ibrahim). Meanwhile, the anti-Assad forces have their own strengths and are also continuing to fight. As Syria is exposed to the conflict between the al-Assad regime (whose control of the country is, as of this writing, confined largely to the capitol of Damascus and its environs) and its opponents (including ISIS, coalitions of Sunni tribes, and Kurds), the intensity of the conflict has driven millions of Syrians outside the country, while millions of Syrians are also internally displaced (Ali; Duval; Galen; Gavlak; MacKenzie; Richard; Sinaria Abdel and Haidar Ibrahim). 

2. Refugee Crises and the United Nations

The Syrian refugee crises and its precipitating circumstances suggest a context through which to analyze the role of international institutions—particularly the United Nations—in terms of both policy and philosophy.

The overarching policy goal of the Allied nations after the Second World War, and other countries that came to be affiliated with the U.N. in the years to come, was to prevent war (Toye and Toye). However, in reality, the U.N. has failed to prevent numerous wars and other acts of conflict from taking place, including the Syrian Civil War. In this sense, refugee crises can be traced not only to the kinds of local circumstances discussed earlier but also to failures of international governance.  

The discrepancy between the U.N.’s avowed purpose of conflict prevention and the reality of war and genocide requires some theoretical explanation; in this case, the question is: Why is the U.N. unwilling or unable to prevent conflicts such as the Syrian Civil War?  This question is of vast importance to both policy makers and ordinary people, given the reality of a world in conflict and the failure of common institutions to do much about it. Deriving an answer to the question could offer a template of how to reaffirm the original purpose of the U.N. and prevent a great deal of refugee suffering from taking place in future. 

The Syrian Civil War has been a fast-moving event, one that has been difficult to see coming or to respond to with international coordination (Ali; Duval; Galen; Gavlak; MacKenzie; Richard; Sinaria Abdel and Haidar Ibrahim).. However, there are other events, and other refugee crises, that have in fact been eminently foreseeable, and that the U.N. has not prevented. 

The general problem from consideration is the U.N.’s inaction in the dimension of conflict prevention (and, therefore, of refugee crisis prevention), which was the mandate on which the U.N. was founded. There are two relevant themes in the theoretical literature: (a) The dominance of realism, particularly with its focus on national self-interest, even in environments of international cooperation; (b) the insufficiency of idealism as a means of overcoming realism and dictating how the U.N. and other transnational institutions act. Both of these themes intertwine with each other; (a) explains why the U.N. actually acts in the way that it does, while (b) explains why the U.N. does not act in a way more in accordance with its foundational principles.

2.1 The Dominance of Realism

The theory and mission statement of the U.N. is that the nations of the world should come together to (a) prevent war and conflict and (b) work in other ways to ensure better health, economic, and social outcomes for the planet. The U.N., like the League of Nations that was formed after the First World War, was born in the aftermath of the worst conflict that the world had ever known, and the pressing matter on the minds of both policy-makers and the publics that they represented was to create an enduring structural deterrent to war and conflict (Toye and Toye).

The means chosen for this aim was the U.N., which was envisioned not as a government but rather as a forum in which national interests could cooperate with and influence each other in mutually beneficial ways. However, even at its founding, there was a fundamental dichotomy between the idealistic vision of the U.N. and the realistic manner of its foundation (Toye and Toye). From the very beginning, the U.N. refused to fight back against the realist conception of the world. For example, unlike the European Union (EU), another transnational institution that emerged years later, the U.N. took no concrete steps to diminish the sovereignty of its members in exchange for a more solid foundation for transnational action. Instead, there were many concessions to realism: (a) The governance structure provided by the U.N. was not in lieu of the actions of individual governments; (b) the U.N. fielded no army of its own, nor envisioned any means by which the soldiers of member states could be subordinated to such an army; and (c) the U.N. imposed no real penalties on the world’s most powerful countries, which, as permanent members of the Security Council, could veto what few punitive regulations that the U.N. could muster. Thus, from the formative years of the U.N., realism reigned (Toye and Toye).

Realism is often defined as an approach to international relations that centers on the explanatory power of both sovereignty and violence. In theories of realism, the basic explanatory unit of international relations is war-making willingness and capability; everything else (such as diplomacy) is either an extension of, or apology for, the violence that underlies everything, or else a meaningless side-issue (Donnelly). 

If it is assumed for the sake of argument that realism is the proper lens through which to explain international relations, the basic contradiction at the root of the U.N. becomes clear. The idealistic premise of the U.N. is actually the replacement of national sovereignty (itself based on military might) with an international sovereignty (Toye and Toye). Yet, in actual practice, the U.N. never took steps to build governance structures for international sovereignty that could pre-empt the existing interests of national sovereignty. If a country was powerful enough, or if it had powerful protectors sitting permanently on the Security Council, it could always defy the U.N., and the U.N. could do nothing about it—because, at the end of the day, the U.N. was just a body of member countries rather than an actual unitary institution distinct from its members. In the case of Syria, the presence of the Russian Federation on the Security Council has prevented either meaningful condemnation or international action from occurring (Toye and Toye).   

In theory, the U.N.’s overt and covert concessions towards national sovereignty go a long way towards explaining why, on issues such as the Syrian Civil War and Syrian refugee crisis, the U.N. has been unwilling or unable to take action. This dynamic can also be glimpsed in the context of other refugee-producing conflicts, such as the Rwandan Genocide.

2.2 The Insufficiency of Idealism

Theorists have been careful to distinguish between the rhetoric of idealism and the enactment of idealism (Mearsheimer; Donnelly). The rhetoric of idealism is just that: Empty words. However, idealism can also be encoded into tangible practices and structures of governance. For example, it can be considered an idealistic attitude to provide free education for the citizens of another country, but policies that actually enable this practice turn the rhetoric into reality. Thus, it is important to distinguish between theories of idealism as rhetoric and theories of idealism as enacted policy.

In the case of the U.N., there are several concrete ways to measure the difference between the two kinds of idealism. For example, the vast amounts of money and in-kind services that the U.N. has contributed to refugees, the poor, and other disadvantaged populations for over six decades testify to the U.N.’s idealism as transcending rhetoric and entering the realm of policy (Bohmer and Shuman; UNHCR). However, when it comes to matters of war and conflict, the U.N. shifts from the policy to the rhetoric of idealism. One paradigmatic proof of this claim lies in the U.N.’s inaction in the face of the Rwandan Genocide. As hundreds of thousands of Rwandans denied in the worst outbreak of mass violence on earth since the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the U.N. issued no end of rhetorical bromides and no beginning of actual action (Prunier).

The explanation of this dynamic can be found in a so-called threshold theory of idealism in policy. Idealism becomes policy only up to the point at which it conflicts with the national interest of a single powerful states or some coalition of states (Donnelly). When idealism enters this conflict with realism, it loses and recedes back into rhetoric. However, when idealism is not checked by realism, it can become policy; after all, countries are willing to donate money to U.N. relief efforts because doing so does not threaten them and is in fact a welcome opportunity to build their international image. On the other hand, a high stakes event, such as war or an accompanying refugee crisis, calls the more selfish realist interests of states to the fore, trumping idealism and relegating it to rhetoric.   

3. Failed International Approaches to Conflict and Refugee Management: Rwanda

The Rwandan Genocide took place in a few brutal months in 1994. However, the events that led to the genocide had their roots in developments dating to the 1960s, and in ways that illustrate the conflict between the realism of nations and the naïve and rhetorical idealism of the U.N. The salient point is that Rwanda consisted of two ethic groups: The Hutu, many of whom spoke French and who were the majority in the country, with control of the political and military apparatus; and the Tutsi, the minority, many of whom were Anglophone (Prunier). Interestingly, the French government had a long record of cooperation with the Hutus and an abiding suspicion of the Tutsis as tools of Anglophone influence in Rwanda. Thus, even though the French were the best situated to appreciate Rwanda’s slide to genocide in 1994, they did nothing to alert the U.N.  (Prunier). The Rwandan Genocide was planned by the Hutu government in the open, and even discussed in cabinet sessions.  Meanwhile, the formation of the Interahamwe militia and its mandate to kill Tutsis also took place largely in the open, to the extent of radio stations broadcasting the intent of this militia to kill all Tutsis (Prunier).

Belgium, the last colonial master of Rwanda, was more vigilant than France, and Belgian soldiers played an important role in the UNAMIR, or United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. UNAMIR was formed in 1993, in the aftermath of the Rwandan civil war, and its leader was Canadian Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire. UNAMIR consisted largely of Belgian, Ghanaian, Bangladeshi, Canadian, and Tunisian troops (Prunier). One of the events that alerted the rest of the world to developments in Rwanda was the killing of ten Belgian UNAMIR soldiers by a Hutu militia. Soon afterwards, Dallaire formally alerted the U.N. to his belief that a genocide was in the making, given extensive evidence such as the existence of weapons caches and other preparations.

However, the U.N. did nothing to strengthen the position of UNAMIR in the run-up to genocide. The U.S., the world’s sole superpower, had just suffered a public relations disaster in the aftermath of its failed intervention in Somalia, and refused to contribute troops. In this case, the U.S. affirmed the realist goal of preserving national prestige even at the expense of doing the right thing. The Belgians pulled out of UNAMIR because their force had suffered disproportionate casualties at the hands of the Hutus. The French were not participants in UNAMIR, despite their close ties to Rwanda. No other U.N. nation contributed troops to Rwanda, as, in their calculus, the risk of losing soldiers was greater than the reward of peacekeeping. On all fronts, realism had won; and thus the genocide proceeded in 1994, with UNAMIR looking on and powerless to act (Prunier).

It is the theme of national sovereignty, which is itself the ultimate underpinning of realism in international relations, which stands out most in retrospect. U.N. action was retarded by the various national agendas and policies of the U.S., France, Belgium, and others, all of which were so geared towards the preservation of national interests that they created obstacles to empowering UNAMIR and thereby either halting or slowing the genocide.

These events mark one of the worst moments in U.N. history. However, the U.N. should not be accused of racism in its failure to act, as the U.N. is only as strong as the wills of its members. General Dallaire pushed hard for a bigger combat role for UNAMIR and took independent action to protect Tutsis, but there was nothing that the U.N. bureaucracy, as represented by UNAMIR, could do in the face of individual national refusals to contribute to the effort (Prunier). That said, there is now some credible scholarship asserting that the French role in the genocide was close to complicity.

The stories of Rwanda and Syria are illustrations of larger themes in international realisms, including themes related to rampant realism, failed idealism, and the supremacy of national interests over the formation of an international consensus. The Syrian Civil War, while a faster-moving event than the Rwandan Genocide, has given ample opportunity to the U.N., EU, U.S., and others to undertake some systematic response to the refugee crisis, if not to the civil war itself.

4. Refugee Crises: The Roles Played by Racism

Static racism is the racism expressed by individuals and corporate entities (businesses, organizations, states, etc.) that are not under any kind of threat from a minority community or communities. This form of everyday racism has become internalized in people’s attitudes, so that it is a knee-jerk racism (Feagin). An excellent example of static racism would be the racism expressed by white slave-owners in the American south during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These slave-owners were in absolute control of their human chattel and were never politically or economically threatened by them. However, despite the fact that the South was isolated from meaningful social, political, and economic change for over two centuries, the intensity of racism never dimmed. On its surface, this example is proof that change is not required for the expression of racism; on the contrary, racism can also proceed from a sense of complacence and a desire to protect a status quo of domination. Static racism is not, however, a good theory to apply to Syria. There is, however, another variety of racism, one that arises during times of change, which is more applicable; this kind of racism is known as dynamic racism. 

Dynamic racism has been closely examined by political theorists. For example, Bates remarked that “it is often useful for those engaged in the competition for modernity to generate and mobilize the support of ethnic groupings” (Bates 464). Thus, in the modern marketplace of ideas, racism is often called upon in support of political competition. In the American context, an example of this kind of racism includes the various acts of personal and civic violence committed by Southerners in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was clear that the momentum of the Civil Rights movement would irreparably destroy Jim Crow. Ironically, before the Civil Rights movement, some white Southerners had lived in psychic peace with their black neighbors, on the assumption that the power balance between them would never shift; it was only when the balance tipped that the most virulent expressions of racism were unleashed.

In Syria, dynamic racism has taken place in several contexts, including the following:

• Refugee host nations’ visceral responses against the resettlement of Syrian refugees, whose image is perceived in public discourse as destabilizing, threatening, foreign elements. Remarkably, these reactions have come in countries (including Germany) that have hitherto promoted anti-racist discourse and policy (Bohmer and Shuman).

• The awakening of quiescent enmities between Arabs and Kurds, who now find themselves in a struggle for Syria’s dwindling resources (Gunter "Iraq, Syria, Isis and the Kurds: Geostrategic Concerns for the Us and Turkey").

• The deepening of the Alawite-Sunni split, which, however, is more sectarian than ethnic. 

One of the most disturbing aspects of dynamic racism is that, since post-modernity is about constant change and negotiation, racism has become a structural component of political and social debates. It is constantly mobilized, because the kind of “competition for modernity” (Bates 464) that Bates describes as the sine qua non of modern existence is also constant. In Syria, ISIS, Kurdish paramilitary groups, the national army, and many other forces have mobilized ethnic and sectarian difference, including racist discourses, as part of the larger war to control the future of Syria.  

Davies added to Bates’ idea that racism is sharpest during times of change. Davies argued that “The crucial factor is the vague or specific fear that ground gained over a long period of time will be quickly lost,” (Davies 98), but added that a lot of other factors have to be present for latent racism to become manifest. Davies’ conditions are that the dissatisfied segment of society must be large, and have access to weapons; that the discontent need to believe that their attempt to return to the status quo has a chance of success and, indeed, they should have “rising expectations” (Davies 99) that victory is just around the corner; and that the state must not be too strong, otherwise it will just put an end to any proposed revolution or terroristic action before it can have much of an impact.

As Nussbaum suggested, crisis also has a way of entrenching racist attitudes; crisis invariably serves as a call to patriotism, and patriotism forecloses on the possibility of meaningful communication or interaction with the other: “emphasis on patriotic pride is both morally dangerous and, ultimately, subversive of some of the worthy goals patriotism sets out to serve...These goals…would be better served by…the cosmopolitan, the person whose allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings” (Nussbaum 4).

One deficiency in Nussbaum’s otherwise admirable analysis is her failure to recognize the role of what Davies calls degradation in the generation of patriotism. In the narrative of dynamic racism, it is just when something is about to lost—i.e., the Assad regime realizes that its two-generation dictatorship is about to fall—that patriotism emerges from its shell of complacency and engineers, if need be, war and genocide (and thereby refugee crises). There is a world of difference between the patriotism of complacency and the patriotism of crisis; it is inevitably the latter that creates the kinds of conflicts that lead to refugee crises. 

4.1 Primordialism, Conflict, and Refugee Crises

Primordialism, as discussed by the pioneering anthropologist Clifford Geertz, is an elevation of cultural difference to the level “political ethnography” (Geertz 263). Geertz, for example, looks at racial, cultural, religious, and ethnic differences as the fault lines along which nations, provinces, and other distinct political units form. At first glance this is a tempting paradigm to apply to Syria, whose constituent ethnicities assert historical claims to different parts of the country.  However, the problem with primordialism as political analysis is that there is no satisfying explanation of change over time. The Syrian Arabs in ISIS and the Kurds have been ethnically distinct from each other for millennia; the question then become why primordialism not assert itself between these two peoples until the events of 2011.

 Also, primordialism fails to account for the intensity of political ethnography. In the case of post-1947 India, which Geertz cites, linguistic difference merely results in administrative units, not separate Indian nationalisms. Primordialism, it seems, has nothing to tell us about why conflict between ethnic communities can range from mere administrative distinctions to genocide. Thus, while pure ethnic difference may certainly be part of the explanation of civil unrest and therefore the refugee crisis in Syria, primordialist explanations alone fails to answer important questions about the timing and intensity of the Syrian Civil War.

Bates lends helpful nuance to the notion of ethnicity as a source of conflict in remarking that “it is often useful for those engaged in the competition for modernity to generate and mobilize the support of ethnic groupings” (Bates 464). The initial appeal of this argument is that it does not depend on a specific definition of ethnicity. Ethnicity can be appealed to and mobilized whether ethnicity itself is real, imagined, or played upon as an instrument by political opportunists. One strength of this way of thinking is that it can be borne out empirically. Berkeley, for example, notes how much ethnic conflict in Africa is in fact manufactured, not primordial: “I found a constellation of factors and events and personalities that obeyed a recognizable logic. These catastrophes….are not inevitable products of primordial, immutable hatreds” (Berkeley 10). Berkeley raises a fine point about the rhetoric of hatred, which, from Conrad onwards, has tended to allow European countries to distance themselves from atrocities that they had some hand in either generating or abetting. Campbell makes the point that this also happened in the context of the Yugoslav War, in which talk of immutable ancient hatreds was used to argue for U.S. and international political passivity (Campbell 50). It is possible that the same rhetoric has been marshaled to excuse the inaction of the U.N., EU, and U.S. in the face of the Syrian refugee crisis. 

The instrumentalist theory of ethnicity is also a shift in tone from primordialism; while primordialism focuses on the essence of ethnicity, instrumentalist looks to the uses to which ethnicity is put. Instrumentalist is thus a practical, problem-solving approach whereas primordialism is more of an essentialist debate about the character of ethnicity itself. Instrumentalism can make predictions about civil conflict that primordialism cannot. For example, for such conflict to take place, instrumentalism would posit the existence of capable political opportunists and allies capable of generating feelings of ethnic difference and hostility as well as the existence of populations receptive to, and willing to act on, these feelings. 

The Bosnian War is a perfect illustration of why Davies’ theory of civil conflict might be more accurate. Firstly, the civil unrest began because two peoples, the Serbs and the Bosnians, both grew afraid that recently-won ground would be lost (Bracewell). The Serbs, who had dominated Communist Yugoslavia since the end of World War Two, saw the death of the Tito and the decade of uncertainty to which it gave rise as precursors of a Serbian decline in the state (Denich). The Bosnians were afraid that the 1980s, a decade of gains for non-Serbian nationalists in Yugoslavia, would be reversed if they capitulated to Serbian political demands to remain part of a Yugoslav state (Denich).

These fears rapidly fed into ethnic instrumentalism on both sides, with political opportunists on both sides exaggerating the minimal ethnic differences between Serb and Bosnian in order to win support for their respective political agendas. Bosnians played up their Muslim identity, despite the fact that they often drank alcohol, ate pork, and were unotherwise unobservant of traditional Islamic law; Serbs tried to portray Bosnians as (alien) Turks, despite the fact that the Bosnian Muslim community is descended from regional converts to Islam, not from any program of Ottoman intermarriage (Marjanovic et al.). Until the first shots were fired in 1992, many Serbs and Bosnians were intermarried, lived in mixed neighborhoods, and were otherwise indistinguishable from each other, rendering any primordial account of their conflict incoherent.  Ashmore, Jussim, and Wilder put the point beyond debate: 

Unlike the impression sometimes given in Serbian and Croatian propaganda, Bosnian Muslims are not the descendants of alien invaders, but of locally residing converts….A Serbian villager in Bosnia had more in common, culturally speaking, with a Muslim co-villager than with a Serb from Belgrade… (Ashmore, Jussim and Wilder 50).

Both groups had rising expectations. The Serbs had inherited Tito’s army, dominated by Serbian officers, while the Bosnians counted on international goodwill. Mestrovic points out that the Yugoslav army was in fact something close to a “Serbian army” (Mestrovic 106)., for example. In the end, Bosnian expectations proved to accord more closely with reality, despite the fact that the international community had displayed an unexpected level of apathy from 1992 onwards. By 1995, when the Serbs were aware that they could neither conquer nor exterminate the entire Bosnian nation, they stopped fighting (Denich). Finally, there was no strong central state to nip the civil unrest in the bud. Yugoslavia dissolved with the death of Tito, and survived the 1980s as a toothless state. This framework cannot yet be applied to the Syrian Civil War, because it is ongoing, but should be kept in mind as an appropriate explanatory framework.

5. National Responses to the Syrian Refugee Crisis

The tale of national responses to the Syrian refugee crisis can be bifurcated into the story of Turkey and the story of all other countries. At the moment, Turkey is home to close to 2 million of Syria’s 6 million international refugees; no other nation is home to a comparable percentage of Syrians (Barkey). In fact, in recent weeks, Turkey has struck a deal with the EU that will see many thousands of refugees resettled from EU countries back to Turkey. 

Any number of nations could be home to Syrian refugees. However, most nations—regardless of their wealth—have mechanisms that have kept them from accepting appreciable numbers of Syrian refugees. For example, the number of refugees admitted to the United States is capped every year in a document that the President’s office presents to the Congress. In fiscal year 2015, the proposed refugee ceiling was 70,000 people (USDOS)—a fraction of the number of immigrants in any given year. The refugee ceiling is not always met; in several recent years, the United States has admitted fewer refugees that stipulated in the proposal for that year. Refugee status is not an entitlement, and the executive branch enjoys substantial leeway in deciding who to admit. Admissions decisions are based on political considerations; for example, the substantial global pressure to resettle Syrian refugees has also impacted U.S. policy. A sharp rise in the number of Syrian refugees after 2011 is a reflection of this pressure.

In the case of Syria, the refugee resettlement policy of the United States is mediated by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR petitions the United States and other countries to resettle refugees, and, depending on factors such as the refugee cap in a given fiscal year and political concerns, the United States decides how many refugees to admit. Because the cap is quite low to begin with, the United States ends up resettling a very small portion of refugees. In the case of Syria and other global crises, the vast distance between the United States and global flashpoints means that the problem of illegal immigration by refugees is minimal. 

The case of Turkey is different because of (a) the shared Turkish-Syrian border and (b) Turkey’s internal interests. As mentioned earlier, the Turkish government has made common cause with the anti-Assad forces in Syria on the basis of religion; the Turkish Islamist government, like the Syrian opposition, is comprised mainly of Sunni Muslims. It is not merely the case that the Turkish regime is an enemy of the Assad regime; Turkey’s ruling Ak Party is also an enemy of the Kurds, who for years have been attempting to carve out their own homeland out of southeastern Turkey (Gunter "Iraq, Syria, Isis and the Kurds: Geostrategic Concerns for the Us and Turkey"; Natali). Given these dynamics, Turkey has been close to ISIS, because ISIS is opposed to Turkey’s two main enemies in Syria—the Assad government and also Syrian Kurds. 

Given this context, Turkey’s openness to Syrian refugees cannot be considered a purely selfless act. It is possible that, just as Syria once harbored Kurdish separatists who threatened the Turkish state, Turkey is harboring Syrian refugees to broker some form of influence on a future Syrian regime. Given that the Syrian refugees are Sunni and Arab, it is also possible that the Turkish government has the aim of patriating them and using them as leverage against the Kurds of southeast Turkey. Whatever the case, it is worth observing that refugee crises can certainly be an occasion for host countries to pursue their own foreign and domestic policies, with refugees as leverage.

Syrian refugee have been turned lack in large numbers from Europe. The official justification for this immigration policy, offered by countries such as Germany, is that the influx of Syrian refugees is too large and therefore threatens the ability of host countries to support them (Richard; UNHCR). However, this argument is rendered somewhat moot by the fact that Turkey, which is substantially poorer than Germany, has nonetheless found a way to house 2 million refugees. A more plausible explanation is that EU countries such as Germany are already struggling with their own internal politics, particularly given the rise of rightist parties that are anti-immigrant in nature. In these countries, the admission of large numbers of Syrian refugees could mean the tipping of political power away from the leftist and center-left parties in power and lend strength to right-wing parties that campaign on anti-immigration, anti-refugee platforms. 

The European and American responses to the Syrian refugee crisis—which have revolved around minimizing the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their jurisdictions—can be considered in light of the theme of racism, which was explored earlier in the paper.  In anthropological of sociological terms, immigrants, particularly non-white, non-European immigrants, have represented what scholars call an out-group (Ben-Shalom). Immigrants, constituting a racially and culturally ‘other’ population, have always been represented as a threat to both the American and the European body politic (Ignatiev). American rhetoric around immigration has continued to portray non-white immigrants as being both dangerous and undesirable, and similar discourses are beginning to gain ground in Europe as well.  

6. Syrian Narratives

There are numerous Syrian narratives that shed light on the phenomenology of the refugee crisis. Many of these narratives are in Arabic and are therefore not accessible to all researchers. However, there are also some narratives that have been translated, and other narratives that take the form of comments made to journalists. Table 1 below contains an overview of selected narratives from Syrian refugees sourced from various English-language media sources. These narratives appear in various English-language outlets and offer a means of understanding the diversity of experiences within the Syrian refugee diaspora. Despite the diversity of perspectives, all of the narratives share a sense of displacement. 

The essence of being a refugee is, of course, leaving a familiar context for a new one; in the case of Syrian refugees, the experience of displacement has ranged from the tragic (as in the case of Syrian refugees who have died or lost family members in the attempt to reach Europe) to hopeful (as in the case of Syrian refugees who have been granted asylee status). Syrian refugee narratives serve to illustrate the point that the refugees are not a faceless, monolithic mass; rather, every refugee has a unique story. Often, these stories coalesce around the goal of leaving the Middle East altogether for a new life in Europe or North America. 

(Table 1 Omitted for Preview. Available via Download).

7. Conclusion

In 2016, the Syrian refugee crisis (Ali; Duval; Galen; Gavlak; MacKenzie; Richard; Sinaria Abdel and Haidar Ibrahim) represents the biggest international refugee problem in several years, recollecting mass displacements such as those recently experienced in war-torn Sudan (Breidlid; Collins; Nasong'o, Godwin and Godwin; Roland) and Afghanistan (Loyn; Motwani and Bose; Roy). The Syrian refugee crisis—recalling, in this respect, many of the major refugee crises of the 21st and late 20th  centuries—has resulted in a large number of international refugees. However, the distribution of these refugees is remarkably uneven, with the plurality of them being in Turkey. 

Based on the themes of idealism, realism, and national interest evaluated in this paper, it seems likely that the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey is not an accident, but rather represents some form of latent political capital for the anti-Assad regime in power in Turkey. Meanwhile, it is also possible to argue that Syrian refugees are politically toxic to regimes in both the EU and U.S. that are aware that large numbers of Syria refugees could create additional grassroots support for anti-immigrant political parties. In the United States, immigration is shaping up to a key issue in the Presidential election of 2016. In countries such as Germany and France, rightist parties are gaining in power and threatening to unseat incumbent governments. In light of these dynamics, it is not surprising that the EU and U.S. have refused to house relatively large numbers of Syrian refugees.

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