I WANT TO GO HOME (Part Three }

I WANT TO GO HOME…..
BUT I HAVE NONE
(Part Three – Final Solution)
INTRODUCTION
You (could this well mean also you, dear reader?) took it away from me!

We know now that in modern warfare, fought on any considerable scale, there can be no possible economic gain for any side. Win or lose, there is nothing but waste and destruction.
Lester B. Pearson
We are so used to using military terminology in civilian speech that we often forget that certain prevalent terms might aspire to something different to what we habitually bind them to, and disregard any other more positive and unblemished meanings. I always found it very tempting and challenging to go beyond any existing classification. And consequently, even perhaps against well-meaning advice, I resisted changing my sub-title.

Most likely, many would attribute ‘final solutions’ to negative events, examples of which may include such genocides as; the Nazis, the Gujarat, the Gerrit Woolfaardt’s plan and the ongoing Palestinian massacres. Hopefully, the present raging refugee crisis wouldn’t run into another genocide, this time international.

Unfortunately, there are many who would try and stop solutions being found and the usual reasons for this are; vested interests, accumulation of vast personal wealth, international corporate power and downright selfish greed.

As long as wars, persecutions and hunger linger, people will continue to seek safer havens.

Western leaders share major responsibility for making much of the world unfit for normal human habitation, in so many different ways. And so far, they are getting away with it. The massive refugee crisis swamping Europe is just the beginning of the troubles that these unscrupulous leaders have brought on their own countries. Now everyone is stunned by the crisis.

While the media focuses on the human tragedy of so many people uprooted and travelling in dangerous circumstances, there is very little attention given to the events that led them to leave their countries. If thousands of people put themselves in the hands of smugglers and risk their lives on such a dangerous crossing it’s because staying on the shore is even more dangerous.

Certainly we all feel for the displaced people, especially the children, but let’s not forget that this is a man-made crisis and it is a government-made crisis. The reason so many are fleeing places like Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq is that US and European interventionist foreign policy has left these countries destabilized with no hopes of recovery. This mass migration from the Middle East and beyond is a direct result of the neocon foreign policy of regime change, invasion, and pushing so-called “democracy” at the barrel of a gun.

People are fleeing from Syria not because of the regime of Bashir Al-Assad but because of ISIS, the Islamic State, which had seized large areas in Syria and Iraq and are committing atrocities there. They kill hundreds and thousands of people, burn them alive or drown them and cut off people’s heads. It is hardly surprising that the carefully filmed and diffused videos of “Islamic State” (IS) disciplinary methods have caused panic among people living in their path of conquest. How are people supposed to live there? How can anybody blame them for running away? After all, as all know, there were no ISIS in either Iraq, Syria or Libya before the US/NATO invasions. Don’t we have a right to ask those who created the problems to tell us how to fix them now, while admitting their fault in the first place?
It is quick and easy to break things. Putting them back together may be impossible.

Unquestionably, with its disastrous foreign policy the EU bears a good partial responsibility for the refugee crisis. Europe is fomenting crises and conflicts in the refugees’ countries of origin by selling weapons to their governments while classifying governments as legitimate, despite knowing better, simply because this suits its own interests. Europe tries to soothe its conscience by intoning the mantra; if we didn’t supply the weapons then other states would.

The poor refugees are not as much of a burden on Europe’s economy as Europe was a burden on Africa, in actual fact, on the whole world of under-developed and developing countries.

While Libya continues to sink and Syria and Iraq subsist in a state of bedlam, both France and Britain discuss the problem of refugees attempting to cross into both countries as if the refugees are swarms of locusts’ incursions, who are often viewed as invaders, not innocent people who were victimized mostly by US-European wars.

Now refugees have become ping-pong balls for Europe. We are constantly hearing terms, such as; quotas, Christian, Muslim, asylum, terrorists, disease, and so many other, sometimes derogatory, words. Of course, the religious angle is never missing. Besides, we now have dealings and transactions with these poor folks, as if such bargains are transactions in trading merchandise:

EU – giving 3.5bn Euros to Turkey to stem influx of immigrants to Europe
Italy – striking deal with France to tighten border controls against French support of Mario Draghi bid
Malta – reported exchange of immigrants for oil exploration rights.

Unfortunately, many such other rackets may be taking place, hidden from our knowledge. It seems that once a thing is profitable it is also considered as ethical.

The sides in the Valletta summit in Malta on immigration have been thrashing out draft conclusions and senseless political declarations in the lead up to a conference aimed at addressing the migration flows to the EU from the African continent. I don’t know what and if any problem-solving methods of the root causes were treated but it was evident that priority was given only to the issue of returns and readmission of refugees. The EU simply wants to increase return rates to African and Middle East countries.

In 2013, French Foreign Minister Fabius had announced that France and Britain were going to deliver arms to the rebels in Syria. Only weapons and not people are being allowed to cross borders now. Europe is selling weapons together with its soul.
War causes people to become refugees.
Is our silence a part of this cause?

How can we ever forget the unjust invasion and war that followed in Iraq, causing a decade-long siege that cost Iraq a million of its children and its entire economy.

Finally, in all respects it comes down to the words of Dwight Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

A long-term solution is considerably more practical and unavoidable and would involve the self-stabilisation of the Middle East and African countries, with extensive humanitarian intervention and development aid with the help of the rich European and Arab countries.

This is the only, real and final solution to the refugees problem: Stop meddling in the affairs of other countries; Embrace the prosperity that comes with a peaceful foreign policy, not the destruction that goes with running an empire. End the Empires!

Take it or leave it! There’s no other way. Greed for power is the root of all evil and only targeting the root will solve the problem.

Oh! What a bloody stupid, deranged and senseless world I’m leaving behind!
Pity the young!

“When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.”
Malala Yousafzai

Joseph M. Cachia December, 2015

Freelance Journalist