Trump’s Selective Empathy for Syrian War Victims
Krishnadev
Calamur, The Atlantic, Apr 18, 2018
He has
intervened to try to stop chemical attacks. But those fleeing the war zone are
mostly not welcomed in the U.S.
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| Syrian children stand in front of their home at the Al Zaatari refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq on February 12. Muhammad Hamed / Reuters |
The Trump
administration has said its policy in Syria is limited to fighting ISIS, and
strikes such as those carried out last week, and in April 2017, reflect
in Mattis’s words “contrary impulses.” As Kori Schake wrote Monday
in The Atlantic: “The one twist from standard realism is the
president’s susceptibility to images of suffering. He indulges an occasional
sentimentality to Do Something when randomly confronted by video of victims of
chemical weapons attacks. It is not immediately apparent why that particular
form of suffering merits action in his view when seemingly all other forms of
brutality leave him unmoved.”
Indeed, more than
500,000 people have been killed since the Syrian civil war began in
March 2011, though one can’t say for sure because the UN has stopped counting.
The conflict has also flattened
entire
cities,
and created more than 5 million
refugees.
“I’ve
seen refugees from Asia to Europe, Kosovo to Africa. I’ve never seen refugees
as traumatized as coming out of Syria,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last
week on Capitol Hill. “It’s got to end.”
What has
ended, or at least nearly so, is America’s granting admission to Syrian
refugees for resettlement in the United States. In the past five months to the
end of March—the most recent date for which State Department data are
available— the U.S. admitted 44 Syrian refugees; over the same period a year ago,
the U.S. admitted 6,000 Syrians. But since November, when the Trump
administration imposed stricter screening protocols for Syrian refugees, the
numbers being admitted to the U.S. have declined sharply: 11 refugees were
allowed in from January 1 to March 31 (none were permitted entry in November
and December).
When asked about
the decline on Fox News Sunday, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to
the UN, said that when she talked to refugees in camps in Jordan and Turkey,
“not one of the many that I talked to ever said we want to go to America. They
want to stay as close to Syria as they can so that when, God willing, this
fighting stops and when there is finally stability and peace in that area, they
want to go rejoin their family members.” But absent a clear path to bringing
stability to Syria, it is unclear when—or even if—these refugees will ever go
home.
Meanwhile
the Trump administration’s broader policy on refugee intake means few of them
will end up in the United States. Last fall, the Trump administration set the
refugee cap—the maximum number of refugees to be admitted into the U.S.— at
45,000. That figure, as I wrote at
the time, was the lowest refugee cap announced since President
Reagan signed the Refugee Act in 1980. Since then, U.S. presidents have, on
average, set a ceiling of 95,000 refugees per fiscal year. As I noted at the
time, there’s no requirement to meet the set maximum.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[T]he
U.S. can also choose to admit a number far lower than the cap, as occurred
immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001. For the subsequent
several years thereafter, the numbers of refugees admitted into the
U.S. fell sharply despite the cap remaining unchanged. The goal of refugee
resettlement groups once the new cap is announced, those I spoke to said, would
be to push the administration to make sure that the number of refugees admitted
into the U.S. is as close to the ceiling as possible.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
That now
looks almost impossible. The low numbers of Syrian refugees being admitted into
the U.S. corresponds with the overall decline in the number of refugees being
granted admission. At the current rate, the U.S. will have admitted about
20,000 refugees by the end of this fiscal year, September 30, 2018.
“Anyone
who tells you that this administration is always incompetent, they’ve got
another think coming,” David Miliband, president and CEO of the International
Rescue Committee, told me in a recent interview. “They are not being
incompetent about this.”
While a
presidential candidate, Trump said
he wouldn’t accept Syrian refugees at all; one of his first acts upon becoming
president was to ban the entry to the U.S. of citizens from seven predominantly
Muslim countries, and suspend the program that allows refugees into the
country. (Those decisions were challenged to varying degrees of success in
courts.) Ultimately, the administration put in place more stringent screening
protocols for Syrians, and people from 10 other countries, to come to the U.S.
Additionally,
as Politico reported last
month, the appointment of Andrew Veprek, who is seen as skeptical of
the U.S. refugee program, as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of
Population, Refugees and Migration added to the fears of refugee advocates that
the administration is trying to weaken the resettlement program. While at the
White House, Veprek, a foreign service officer, worked closely with Stephen
Miller, Trump’s senior adviser, who supports lower immigration to the U.S. Politico
reported that Veprek shares those views.
A State
Department official I spoke to told me on condition of anonymity that “there’s
a fear they want to dismantle the program.” If the Trump administration
dramatically reduces the intake of refugees over his term, “it won’t be easy
for the next administration to put it back together,” the official told me.
I asked
the U.S. State Department about the rates at which applications were being
processed and whether the U.S. would increase the number of Syrian refugees
entering the country, given that civilian protection was a stated reason for
the recent U.S. missile strikes in Syria.
A State
Department spokesperson said: “Processing time may be slower as we implement
additional security vetting procedures; each refugee’s case is different.” The
spokesperson added: “It is too early to determine what final [fiscal year] 2018
refugee admission numbers will be. The refugee admissions ceiling of 45,000 is
not a quota but represents an upper limit of refugee admissions for this fiscal
year.”
But, the
spokesperson pointed out, the U.S. remains the largest single-country
humanitarian donor in Syria, and had provided nearly $7.7 billion in
humanitarian assistance for those displaced inside the country.
“Our
funding also helps mitigate the effects of the crisis on governments and
communities throughout the region that are straining to cope as they continue
to generously host refugees from Syria,” the spokesperson said.
The
overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees live in camps in neighboring
countries. About 3.5 million live in Turkey, an additional 1 million in
Lebanon, and 600,000 in Jordan. Many of these countries, already facing their
own economic strains, are struggling to cope with the massive numbers of
newcomers. But Miliband, who previously served as the U.K. foreign secretary,
told me that it’s the rich countries like the U.S. that must set an example.
“The
argument has got to be: These countries are bearing the greater share of
responsibility. They need help to do so ... but it’s also important that
countries like this [the U.S.] lead the way in showing responsibility
themselves,” he said. “You stand in solidarity with the countries that are
bearing the greater share of responsibility because that's where America’s
moral standing comes from.”
