Opinion: There are still 14 million displaced Syrians in crisis. We … – The San Diego Union-Tribune

Provence is a professor of Middle Eastern history at UC San Diego. He spent two and half years living in Syria as a Fulbright scholar from 1998 to 2002. He lives in Golden Hill.

A group of scholars, including Syrian and Syrian American activists and dissidents, will meet at UC San Diego tonight at the Roth Auditorium on Torrey Pines Drive to discuss the crisis in Syria and the Middle East. More than a year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Syria remains the worlds gravest refugee crisis. Twelve years after the beginning of the Syrian uprising, there are still 14 million displaced Syrians. Millions are still in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

What has the U.S. done to ease the disaster? What can be done now? Those are the questions we will discuss.

Twenty years ago last month, the United States invaded Iraq. The invasion unleashed what was then the most serious humanitarian crisis since the Second World War, and destabilized the Middle East in ways still unfolding today. Millions of Iraqis fled the violence America brought to their country, and more of them went to Syria than anywhere else.

Syria was a fairly stable authoritarian country in those days. But it was not a rich country and its resources were strained to house, feed and school the refugees. They were welcomed in any case. The Bush administration targeted Syria for its vocal opposition to the invasion of Iraq, and there was no aid for the Iraqi refugees in Syria. Meanwhile the U.S. spent $1 trillion destroying Iraq.

In 2011, during the Arab Spring uprisings, Syrian demonstrators challenged the authoritarian structures and corruption of their government. They were met with ferocious oppression and violence, and in turn, some came to answer regime violence with anti-regime violence, albeit never at the same level of destruction and loss of life. The world denounced the cruelty and violence the Syrian government unleashed on its own people, but no one did very much. The Obama administration played an ambivalent and uncertain role, encouraging but not supporting demonstrators, cooperating with the anti-Assad government Gulf states and Turkey but recoiling from the prospect of supplying weapons to any Syrian opponents of the regime. The contrast with Ukraine is stark. Syrians armed opposition, the Free Syrian Army, could not be trusted to defend itself from tyranny and injustice on the world stage.

Millions of refugees fled to neighboring countries, but few refugees wanted to imagine their lives unfolding in a rural refugee camp, and millions of those who could attempted to flee to safe countries that promised a decent future. Many families pooled their resources to send one or two military-age sons, to spare them conscription, and likely death, and, in an age-old migrant strategy, to save the family, one person at time. Families hoped those sons could cross the Mediterranean and, one day, help their loved ones left behind.

As in the 1930s and the Second World War, displaced people found many doors were closed, and some, like Viktor Orbns Hungary, were slammed shut, accompanied by a global tide of anti-immigrant, right-wing populism. A few countries reacted with a view to history, and the responsibilities of safety and privilege, notably Germany, Sweden, Canada and Austria. The refugees included doctors, engineers and people who contributed immediately to their new countries.

In the United States, President Barack Obamas government issued asylum visas for about 20,000 Syrians after he took office in 2009. But the Obama administration also dithered in its policy toward the Assad government, and in 2014 began an anti-Islamic State group bombing campaign that had the result of strengthening the Assad government and allowing direct intervention by allies Russia and Iran in the Syrian War. It is likely Obamas campaign saved Syrian President Bashar Assad from defeat, or at least from any need to compromise with his critics.

Donald Trump was inaugurated as U.S. president in January 2017 and issued his Muslim ban, explicitly aimed at Syrian refugees. Since that time, the traditional American asylum and refugee program, a vaunted feature of the post-World War II human rights consensus, has been shredded. There is no sign Washington has the courage or motivation to rebuild it.

We will hear from activist scholars who had firsthand experience in the Syrian opposition movement and state oppression, as refugees and as asylum seekers. Their stories deserve our attention.

What: A panel discussion titled How the U.S. Failed Syrians, sponsored by UC San Diego Institute of Arts and Humanities Middle East Studies Program

When: Today from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Where: Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicines Roth Auditorium, 2880 Torrey Pines Scenic Drive, UC San Diego

Both the panel discussion and parking are free and open to the public.

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Opinion: There are still 14 million displaced Syrians in crisis. We ... - The San Diego Union-Tribune