The Cipher Brief sat down with Robert Richer, former CIA Associate Deputy Director for Operations, to talk about the Middle East refugee crisis that threatens to overrun Europe. He helped unravel why this crisis is occurring and suggested ways to mitigate it.
The Cipher Brief: The media is characterizing the influx of migrants into Europe as “the worst refugee crisis since World War Two.” What is your take on the crisis and how is it different from what we have seen in the past?
Robert Richer: I think that comparison is not far off. To me, this is another wave of refugees caused by internal turmoil, change of governments, and outside influences. I would also compare it to the number of millions of Palestinian refugees; you have 2.1 million or so in Jordan, over 1 million in Lebanon, and about half a million in Syria, so the numbers are about the same.
In terms of the impact on Europe, it is only going to get worse. You have two types of refugees right now: you have refugees who are fleeing for safety, and then you have migrants who are looking for economic stability. Syria is collapsing and Iraq is collapsing in terms of the ability to live and do business. Refugees from as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan are making it all the way across the sub-continent, then into and across the Middle East. This is endemic of a collapse of governments and a collapse of civilization in some of these countries.
TCB: What is going to be the main impact on the Middle East and Europe in terms of security and the economy?
RR: Let’s talk about who leaves countries. The first waves are always those who can afford to get out of the country—the ones who have the ability to get a visa somewhere, have the money to take an airplane, and have the money to buy their way out. The second wave tends to be those who are politically disenfranchised, who are forbidden from using certain types of transit, who have to sneak out of the country, and those who are economically challenged. What you’re looking at is a great pool of unskilled labor going into Europe, which has already received a huge influx of unskilled labor from the former Soviet Republics.
Here, they have a couple of problems. One, they are going to countries where their ability to get a job is pretty minimal. Two, they are going to be competing with the wave of the 90s and early 2000s from Eastern Europe—Belarusians, some Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians—who left their countries looking for opportunity and who make up a large portion of the infrastructure jobs. The new refugees are going to compete with those people, which is not going to go well. Germany has already had the problem where the huge influx of Turks, Macedonians, and others who have come to their country over the last 20 years are now fighting for space with this influx from the Middle East, this new group of people who don’t speak the language and are looking for support.
For me, the impact is both economic and stability-related. You now have rising nationalist parties in France and Germany, who are rebelling, and who are fueled by the round of migrants that came in during the 90s. Now integrated in Germany and France, these migrants are opposed to the newest wave of the migrants coming into the country, similar to our history back in the 1800s. Around the 1860s, the Scots were upset with the Irish and the Irish were upset with the Italians coming across. We are seeing those kinds of confrontations right now in Europe.
TCB: Is there anything that we can learn from past refugee crises that will help those trying to solve this one?
RR: The real way to solve a refugee crisis of any magnitude is with stability. Camps cannot be the only solution—look at the camps that have been established for refugees over the years. What we can really do is force some type of peace or stabilized environment in the countries at risk.
This is a migration of epic proportions; to walk, swim, and risk your life with smugglers on small boats in the hope that at least you can sleep without being killed in the middle of the night or shot by extremists. They’re taking their kids and giving everything up to try to walk thousands of miles in the hopes of a better life. But what’s going to happen when they get to that better life, and they realize that they’re disenfranchised, and that they really don’t have anything more than a more stable environment? The problem is that now they’re going to be disliked by the people trying to take care of them. What seems to work more than anything else is a peaceful political solution, whether it’s mandated or forced upon through regime change.
TCB: How much of this problem is ultimately related to ISIS and what is going on in Iraq & Syria?
RR: A lot of experts I talk to at the UN would say that this started with the invasion of Iraq and the displacement of Sunnis from a position of power, which created a disenfranchised society, which gave rise to people like Zarqawi, which gave birth to people like ISIS. In Syria, it was the inability of the West and the region to move as aggressively as possible against Bashar al-Assad in Syria or, on the other hand, to realize that not everyone can look like us in terms of democracy. In some cases, things work better with the leadership they have than the leadership we want or hope they’re going to have.
The polling that’s been done on Iraq over the past couple of years indicates that the average Iraqi felt better under Saddam Hussein than under what came after Saddam Hussein. Many Syrians would tell you that they had stability under Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, as well as under Bashar.
The problem we have is from the outside, we have tried to dictate change and that change has, unfortunately, created an environment of instability and no one owning up to the problems in the region. I think countries in the region, particularly Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, are doing all they can to absorb as many of the refugees as they can. They’re over capacity, their internal resources are being strained, and it’s causing internal issues. The problem is that the refugee crisis has now become a European issue, and a global issue.
TCB: At the end of the day, this is a crisis that affects a lot of different countries and people. Who should be leading the charge on solving the problem?
RR: The only solution that’s going to work in Iraq and Syria is going to be a solution that comes from those countries or from within the region. The U.S., the British, and the French can support the solution, but we cannot dictate it because the Arabs need to take care of their own problem. It just has not worked where outside governments influence things based on their own ideals—look back to the Crusades for an example.
That being said, people need to be empowered, or the region needs to be empowered, to make this their issue rather than hoping that a coalition of the willing can help solve the problem through bombs from the air and political pressure. Unfortunately, there has been a very passive approach. You have small countries doing a lot of work, such as Jordan. Then you have other countries looking at other issues; Saudi Arabia is more focused on the millions of refugees in Yemen. I don’t advocate a retreat to isolation, but I do think this is really a regional issue that needs to be solved by empowering those who are actually going to have to live with the consequences because, if not, they are going to end up becoming shadows of their former selves.
TCB: It seems that this big influx of migrants or refugees to Europe, as opposed to the Middle East-North Africa region, began in the past year or so. What has caused this change?
RR: Those who deal with the Middle East regularly believe that it’s a combination of factors. Number one is the very public approach that some of these countries have taken in terms of asylum-seekers. When you have places like Iceland, which says they’ll take in 10-20 thousand refugees, these people know that they have to get to Europe first before they can be taken in. Number two, which I respect most, is how dismal it has become in those countries generating a majority of the refugees, namely Syria and Iraq.
The point here is that there is really no other option. Looking at a map—the Gulf is not going to take them, Iran is not going to take them, Jordan is at capacity, and the Saudis would never take them. All they have is Turkey and Greece, and from there Europe, so there is nowhere else to go. In many ways, it is do or die for these people, and that’s the thing we have to change.
And, I predict that this is not going to stop. This is something we’re going to be dealing with, in particular for the next 60-90 days, and then there are going to be horrible tragedies when winter hits a lot of these places. People are going to be exposed to the elements, and we are going to see death after death. This is going to be a humanitarian catastrophe for all the countries in that pipeline. They have made the decision: they are on their way to Europe.
