Touring Refugee Camp, Kerry Sees Mounting Syrian Suffering
Pool photo by Mandel Ngan
The Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, near the Syrian border.
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: July 18, 2013
ZAATARI, Jordan — Secretary of State John Kerry helicoptered to the
crowded refugee camp here on Thursday to take stock of the humanitarian
crisis caused by the bitter fighting in neighboring Syria and highlight
the American efforts to provide aid.
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Pool photo by Mandel Ngan
Secretary of State John Kerry greeted refugees on Thursday, below, while visiting the camp.
But as frustrated Syrian refugees appealed for Western military
intervention to halt the attacks by the Syrian government’s forces, Mr.
Kerry’s visit soon became a graphic illustration of the limits of the
Obama administration’s policy.
“We are not satisfied with the American answers,” said Jamalat
Abdulraouf al-Hariri, 43, after her meeting with Mr. Kerry.
“We just need an action,” she added, noting that the refugees wanted the
United States to establish a no-fly zone or a protected area for
civilians inside Syria. “We always hear words.”
The Zaatari camp, so close to the border that refugees can hear
artillery fire at night, sprouted up as a temporary refuge.
But some 115,000 people currently live here. And now that the forces of
the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad — with the help of Hezbollah
fighters and Iranian paramilitary Quds force operatives — have captured
the strategic western town of Qusayr, the Zaatari camp has begun to take
on a more permanent appearance.
Prefabricated houses, some of which feature satellite dishes, are taking
the places of tents. Refugees stand on the rooftops at night to phone
relatives left behind. Some 3,000 shops have been established, many of
which line a street that camp officials with some irony have dubbed the
Champs-Elysees. Camp occupants run taxi services, and as many as 15
babies are born each day in a hospital run by the French. The camp costs
$1 million a day to operate.
“After Qusayr, everybody is beginning to understand that they are going to stay for a while," said Kilian Kleinschmidt, the German camp manager who works for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Troubled by a range of problems, the camp is just a small piece of a the
widening humanitarian crisis. According to a senior State Department
official, about 2.5 million Syrians are “internally displaced,” an
increase of one million since the beginning of the year.
An additional 1.7 million Syrians have left the country, according to
tabulations by the United Nations refugee agency, though the State
Department official noted that the actual number could be higher.
The United Nations has estimated that there could be as many as three
million refugees by the end of the year. That would mean that more than
five million of Syria’s 23 million citizens would have been forced from
their homes.
António Guterres, the head of the United Nations refugee agency, has
expressed growing alarm about the scope and severity of the crisis. On
Tuesday, he told the Security Council that the pace of Syrians’ fleeing
the country was the worst since the Rwandan genocide
in 1994. On Thursday, he criticized the European Union for not doing
enough to assist Syrians who have sought shelter and asylum in Europe,
suggesting a more generous outreach could help ease the refugee burdens
imposed on Syria’s neighbors. “A positive example from Europe is now
crucial,” Mr. Guterres told a meeting of the European Union’s Justice
and Home Affairs Council in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Mr. Kleinschmidt said security at the Zaatari camp had improved from the
days when United Nations workers had to wear hard hats to protect
against rocks thrown by disgruntled refugees.
But there are still enormous difficulties. Some 60 percent of the camp’s
population is under 17, and only 5,000 of the 30,000 children who
should be attending school do. Gangs remains a concern. A prefabricated
structure that was intended to serve as police station was looted and
carted away before it could be occupied, United Nations workers said.
Fleeing from the brutality in Syria, many of the refugees, Mr.
Kleinschmidt said, “have a disturbed relationship with authority” and
distrust people in uniform.
The population of the camp has fluctuated over time: it has actually
gone down in recent months as some camp inhabitants have tried to find
accommodations with friends or relatives in Jordan — sometimes only to
return. The total number of refugees in Jordan is estimated at 550,000.
After flying here with Nasser Judeh, Jordan’s foreign minister, Mr.
Kerry was escorted to a headquarters area that was fenced off from the
refugees’ living area for meetings with Mr. Kleinschmidt, the camp’s
manager, along with a half dozen of the refugees.
Before the Syrians joined them, Mr. Kleinschmidt told Mr. Kerry that
many refugees believed the West was guilty of “nonaction.”
“What do they mean by nonaction?” Mr. Kerry asked.
“Military action,” Mr. Kleinschmidt explained.
Many of the refugees arrived with terrible stories of killing, rape and
suffering that evoked the Rwanda genocide, said Mr. Kleinschmidt, who
has served in Somalia, the Congo, Sri Lanka and Balkans.
Once the Syrians — four women and two men — were ushered in, Mr. Kerry
listened gravely as they pleaded for a no-fly zone and a protected
buffer area to which refugees could return. The refugees also asked that
the United States take military action to stop shipments of weapons
from Iran and the influx of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon.
“Where is the international community?” said one of the women, who did
not provide her name. “What are you waiting for? We hope that you will
not go aback to the States before you find a solution to the crisis.”
Mr. Kerry responded, “As you know, we’ve been fighting two wars for 12
years,” implicitly acknowledging that the Obama administration’s
response to the Syrian crisis had been influenced by its weariness with
its own miltary operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“We are trying to help in various ways, including helping Syrian
opposition fighters have weapons,” Mr. Kerry added. “We are doing new
things. There is consideration of buffer zones and other things, but it
is not as simple as it sounds.”
Mr. Kerry acknowledged that he was “very concerned about Hezbollah and Iran.”
As he prepared to leave the camp, Mr. Kerry told reporters that his
visit had highlighted the need to respond to the worsening situation in
Syria. Having provided $815 million in humanitarian assistance, the
United States is the largest financial aid donor in the conflict. But
Mr. Kerry provided no hint that the refugees’ appeal for military
intervention would ever be answered.
“I think they are frustrated and angry at the world for not stepping
up,” he said. “If I was in their shoes, I would be looking for help
wherever I could find it. I share their passion and frustration for the
plight that they face on a day-to-day basis.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/world/middleeast/touring-refugee-camp-kerry-sees-mounting-syrian-suffering.html
As many have already said this is the worst humanitarian Crisis since the end of the Cold War around 1990. However, it could be said that this is the start of the next phase of the "Cold War" presently called "The Cool War" by many. In a Cold War or "Cool War" environment millions of refugees and starving masses would be "Normal" even though horrific for the world to comprehend. It doesn't matter what continent or continents something like this happens on the world is going to stare in disbelief and in horror. But, in order to make any sense at all these refugees are an aspect of a Cold War (a Cool War) and are likely to get much worse before they get better because of the very strange stances the largest and most developed nations must take in order to survive as nations without nuking the world completely out of existence in about 10 minutes one day.
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