Word: America's role in the refugee crisis

Raed Jarrar is government relations manager at the American Friends Service Committee. From an interview by FAIR.

Raed Jarrar - I think that is one of the main issues that’s happening now, the lack of connection between the humanitarian crisis of all of the refugees and displaced people in the Middle East and the US’s own actions in that part of the world. US mainstream media and mainstream politicians have been trying to deal with the humanitarian crisis as if this just happened because of a natural disaster. As if there is a tsunami that has hit the Middle East, and that is why we are having millions of displaced people.

That is not the case. These people who are leaving their homes in Iraq and Syria and Libya and Afghanistan and elsewhere and going to Europe, they are going there because of political and military unrest in their homes. The fact of the matter is that Europe and the United States have played an instrumental role in destroying most of these countries and creating the conditions where people have to leave their countries in the first place.

So while humanitarian assistance is important, and I agree with the calls for Europe and the US to do something—I think that “something” should include some humanitarian assistance and helping refugees—but it also has to include looking at the larger picture and understanding that the actual solution for the refugee crisis is a political solution that would solve the situation back at home and allow for voluntary repatriation.

... Our foreign policy engagement is very militarized. There was a really amazing report that came out late last year by the Congressional Research Service, and the report looked into the US spending on wars since 9/11. It found out that we’ve spent trillions of dollars on wars... But the thing that I found extremely interesting in that report is that 93 percent of the spending went to the Department of Defense, and 7 percent went to the State Department and US AID. And I think that is an actual reflection of the US foreign policy. It is a policy based on militarism and almost exclusively used for military tools.

So now when we deal with the crisis like the one happening in the Middle East, it doesn’t seem like we have other tools in the toolbox other than sending a bomb. We have to bomb someone. There are refugees running away–we have to bomb someone. And it’s such a frustrating, knee-jerk reaction to think about a solution to this crisis by using the same tools that had started the crisis in the first place. Military intervention in the Middle East has started this crisis in the first place.

So definitely, no–no to more intervention in Syria or Iraq. The US has responsibilities because it broke many of these countries, but these responsibilities cannot be fulfilled through military action; they can be fulfilled through political and economic and other sources of engagement in the region that would end the military conflict and put all of these countries on the path of civilization.