Russia’s assault on the Syrian city is set
to intensify the migrant crisis
With each day that passes, Europe’s migrant crisis deepens. In the past few weeks, EU governments have tried and failed to slow the flow of refugees from the Middle East, the Balkans and north
Africa by suspending some Schengen arrangements and re-establishing border
controls. Last month, 61,000 migrants crossed from Turkey to Greece, 35 times
more than in January 2015. If that were not enough to alarm Europe’s capitals,
the Assad regime’s assault on the Syrian city of Aleppo, aided by Russian air
strikes, threatens to make matters far worse.
The bombardment has already forced more than 100,000 people to flee north
to the Turkish border, pleading to be allowed to cross. Fears that Aleppo, once
home to 2m, is about to be encircled are raising concerns that this flight may
intensify. Any humanitarian appeal to President Vladimir Putin to scale back
the aerial attacks looks unlikely to be successful. The Russian leader appears
bent on destroying the anti-Assad rebels with the same ruthlessness he and his
surrogates once showed in Chechnya.
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The US and its European allies
have shown little appetite for confronting the Assad regime militarily. There
are therefore few options available to the west. However, EU leaders should not
take their eyes off the need to forge an agreement among themselves on how to
manage the number of migrants to European soil. They have failed lamentably so
far.
Angela Merkel and other EU leaders have rightly recognised that if they
are to manage the refugee flows, they need to persuade Syria’s neighbours —
Turkey in particular — to shelter the migrants on their own territory rather
than allowing them to journey to Europe. The EU has started transferring €3bn
to Ankara to help with this task. This places an obligation on Turkey to
register new arrivals properly, distinguishing people fleeing persecution from
economic migrants who have no valid asylum claim.
Europe also has
responsibilities, however. Turkey and the two other nations sheltering Syrian
refugees, Jordan and Lebanon, cannot be treated as little more than holding
pens for migrants. The EU’s 28 nations need to demonstrate that those refugees
with a genuine case for asylum will be accepted into European states. The
number of migrants who have been resettled across the bloc has thus far been
pitifully small.
A Dutch proposal for EU member states to take in annually up
to 250,000 people located in Turkey needs to be implemented.
Given the unease over
immigration across Europe, the Dutch plan demands a degree of political courage
that Europe’s leaders have yet to display. They have opted for populist
measures, most notably with plans to set up a barrier between Greece, an EU
member state, and Macedonia to stop uncontrolled migration across the border.
This is impractical because migrants will find other routes into Europe. It has
also infuriated Greece, which rightly condemns the move as a first step by
Brussels towards throwing it out of the Schengen system.
As they watch Russia’s
bombardment of Aleppo, EU leaders need to recognise what is at stake. Mr Putin
is not only deploying his jets to reassert Russian power in the Middle East. He
is also fuelling a refugee crisis that has fractured European unity, boosted
the cause of populism and risks undermining a German chancellor who stood up to
him over his intervention in Ukraine. The EU’s 28 member states must overcome
their internal divisions and unite around a common migration policy before Mr
Putin divides them any further.
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