World View: World Food Program Terminates Aid to 1.7 Million Syrian Refugees

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• World Food Program terminates aid to 1.7 million Syrian refugees
• Syrian refugees increasingly threaten regional stability

World Food Program terminates aid to 1.7 million Syrian refugees

Syrian refugee camp

Some 1.7 million Syrian refugees, who have depended on the UnitedNations World Food Program (WFP) to provide food vouchers so that theycan eat at least one meal a day, are now going to have to go withoutthat food. The WFP food voucher program has been shut down as ofDecember 1 for lack of funding, just as winter is approaching.

Every month, the UN feeds over four million people inside Syria, andalmost two million more now sheltered in other countries. The foodvoucher program allowed 1.7 million refugees in Jordan, Lebanon,Turkey, Iraq and Egypt to purchase food in local stores.

Many countries have pledged money to the WFP without honoringtheir pledges. That lack of honor is not true of the UnitedStates, which has given almost $1 billion to the WFP for itsoperations with Syrians since the conflict started, including adonation last week of $125 million. But that money coveredfood vouchers was issued in November, and was not enough to staveoff the end of food vouchers on December 1.

The food voucher money not only allowed refugees to purchase food, butit also provided cash that traveled through the community to createjobs and business opportunities. The loss of this funding, especiallywith the cold winter approaching, is going to mean increasedinstability in a region where instability is growing on a daily basisanyway.

Syria’s refugees are currently the world’s largest humanitariandisaster, but not the not the only one. Recently, the WFP was forcedto cut food rations for the half-million Sudanese and Somalianrefugees in Kenyan refugee camps. The Ebola crisis in West Africa iscreating food shortages for more than a million people. The growingmillions of people in crisis are overwhelming United Nations’ aidagencies to the point where they can no longer operate effectively.

CS Monitor and LA Times

Syrian refugees increasingly threaten regional stability

It’s been personally astonishing to me to see the Syrian conflictunfold from peaceful demonstrations into a proxy war threateningthe region and the world.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL) is acreation of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad and his supporters,including Russia’s president Vladimir and Iran’s Supreme AyatollahSeyed Ali Khamenei. These are all war criminals because theyparticipated in and supported wholesale genocide against innocentSyrian Sunnis. Syria’s Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad hasflattened entire Sunni villages with Russia’s heavy weapons, he’skilled children by sending missiles into exam rooms and bedrooms, he’skilled dozens with sarin gas, and he’s killed countless more withbarrel bombs loaded with explosives, metals, and chlorine gas. Inaddition, he’s used electrocution, eye-gouging, strangulation,starvation, and beating on tens of thousands of prisoners on a massivefact with encouragement and support from Russia and Iran.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, it was hard for me to understandhow Hitler and Stalin could have gotten away with what they had done,and why they had so many supporters. I remember asking my mother thatvery question and not getting a satisfactory answer. Now I understandwhy, as I see the sycophants of al-Assad and Putin defend theirhorrific actions. And the sycophants have been rewarded. Al-Assad’sgenocidal actions against innocent protesting Sunnis have encouragedjihadists from around to world to join ISIS and other jihadistorganizations. We can now see how stupidity brings about disaster.

When refugees began crossing borders in 2011, they were treatedwith sympathy and given the aid that they needed. But asthe hundreds of refugees have grown into thousands, thentens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands, their welcomehas worn thin, and they’re straining the resources of theneighboring countries. Syrians are willing to work for low wages,forcing everyone’s wages down. Rents are rising because ofthe refugees, and schools and hospitals are becoming crowded.The refugees complain of discrimination, abuse, and sexualexploitation by landlords and merchants.

And there’s no end in sight. Apparently nobody is going to stopal-Assad and his chemical-weapons-laden barrel bombs being dumped onneighborhoods filled with innocent women and children. So there’sreally no expectation that the refugee crisis will end anytime soon.Al-Assad and Putin will continue with mass murder, and ISIS willcontinue to become more powerful.

Lebanon has attempted to enforce new measures aimed at limiting thenumber of Syrians entering the country. These new measures havereduced the influx of refugees, but rights groups have denounced themeasures, claiming that they violate international law.

Jordan is a small country, but it’s hosting 1.2 million Syriarefugees. The Syrians are the third big wave of refugees to enterJordan since independence in 1946. First came the Palestinians – thosewho lost their homes when Israel was created in 1948, and a secondexodus in the wake of the 1967 war. Iraqis arrived in 1991 and againin 2003. Now the Syrian refugees have done it again.

Like Lebanon, Jordan is closing its border to all but a small numberof further Syrian refugees. This is motivated largely by securityneeds. The refugees are coming from regions of Syria under control ofISIS, and there’s a danger that ISIS terrorists will enter Jordanpretending to be refugees. VOA and Guardian (London)

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, United Nations, World Food Program, WFP,Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, Kenya,Iran, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Russia, Vladimir Putin,Bashar al-Assad
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail