How America Blew It in Syria

Arab hospitality aside, Syria’s political decision to provide shelter and social services to Iraqi citizens was not without economic consequence. Housing prices skyrocketed under increased demand, inflation soared and job openings vanished, despite the fact that most Iraqi refugees are not permitted to work. At first, Syria’s economy gained a small boost, but that quickly faded into a recession when the wealthy Iraqis exhausted their life savings. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented inhabitants spurred the formation black markets while Syrian hospitals and schools stretched beyond capacity. In this ongoing economic crisis, is it any wonder that the Syrian government is incredulous about American demands to build up a wall? Perhaps Mr. Gorbachev would like to field that question...

Syria and Iraq have been good neighbors for a very long time. Before this war, the last person to advocate so strict a division between the two countries was Saddam Hussein when he struggled to consolidate power in 1979.

There are no camps or tents or lines for food. The situation seems strangely normal, except that a pervasive sense of hopelessness grips the community—nearly everyone is out of work..

During my trip to Syria, I interviewed Philippe LeClerc, the deputy representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Damascus. Among other things, LeClerc spoke about the measures being taken to address the humanitarian challenge of providing aid to a million victims of war.

“For obvious reasons,” LeClerc explained, “the US is contributing more than its normal share [to the UNHCR mission in Syria].” The US contributes roughly fifty percent of the $90 million budget. But LeClerc believes that the US would give more support to the refugee problem if the roadmap to peace hadn’t hit a political roadblock.

“It’s not that the UN couldn’t effectively implement more funding,” LeClerc cautioned, but the US won’t contribute more money until, “other countries increase ‘their share’ of the burden.”  Lamentably, potential donor countries equate supporting Iraqi refugees to providing tacit support for the war, which makes raising more funding as unlikely as American diplomacy without preconditions. To make matters worse, Iraq has spent little, if any of its $80 billion treasury surplus on the repatriation of its own people.

Every soldier knows that when giving first aid to a gunshot, there are always two wounds to treat—the point of entry and the exit wound. This is the case with the Iraq War—the bullet may have entered through Baghdad, but the exit wound is in Syria.  The Surge has stemmed the blood loss from the land between two rivers, but upstream from Mesopotamia, the patient still bleeds. Regional stability and a responsible withdrawal from the Middle East will absolutely require the next President to treat both wounds. 

Cross-border raids may be the right answer for bagging Bin Laden, but without addressing the systemic refugee problem, this short-sighted tactic in Syria amounts to nothing more than poking our fingers into a bullet wound after having pulled the trigger.  A shred of human decency and a serious package of financial aid for the hosts of our Iraqi friends would be far more useful toward ending this conflict.