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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 2-Dec-2014
2-Dec-14 World View -- World Food Program terminates aid to 1.7 million Syrian refugees

Web Log - December, 2014

2-Dec-14 World View -- World Food Program terminates aid to 1.7 million Syrian refugees

Syrian refugees increasingly threaten regional stability

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

Syrian refugee camp

Some 1.7 million Syrian refugees, who have depended on the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to provide food vouchers so that they can eat at least one meal a day, are now going to have to go without that food. The WFP food voucher program has been shut down as of December 1 for lack of funding, just as winter is approaching.

Every month, the UN feeds over four million people inside Syria, and almost two million more now sheltered in other countries. The food voucher 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 honoring their pledges. That lack of honor is not true of the United States which has given almost $1 billion to the WFP for its operations with Syrians since the conflict started, including a donation last week of $125 million. But that money covered food vouchers issued in November, and was not enough to stave off the end of food vouchers on December 1.

The food voucher money not only allowed refugees to purchase food, but it also provided cash that traveled through the community to create jobs and business opportunities. The loss of this funding, especially with the cold winter approaching, is going to mean increased instability in a region where instability is growing on a daily basis anyway.

Syria's refugees are currently the world's largest humanitarian disaster, but not the not the only one. Recently, the WFP was forced to cut food rations for the half-million Sudanese and Somalian refugees in Kenyan refugee camp. The Ebola crisis in West Africa is creating food shortages for more than a million people. The growing millions of people in crisis are overwhelming United Nations' aid agencies 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 conflict unfold from peaceful demonstrations into a proxy war threatening the region and the world.

The Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL) is a creation of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad and his supporters, including Russia's president Vladimir and Iran's Supreme Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei. These are all war criminals because they participated in and supported wholesale genocide against innocent Syria Sunnis. Syria's Shia/Alawite president Bashar al-Assad has flattened entire Sunni villages with Russia's heavy weapons, he's killed children by sending missiles into exam rooms and bedrooms, he's killed dozens with sarin gas, and he's killed countless more with barrel bombs loaded with explosives, metals, and chlorine gas. In addition, he's used electrocution, eye-gouging, strangulation, starvation, and beating on tens of thousands of prisoners on a massive "industrial strength" scale, and does with complete impunity, and in fact with encouragement and support from Russia and Iran.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, it was hard for me to understand how Hitler and Stalin could have gotten away with what they had done, and why they had so many supporters. I remember asking my mother that very question and not getting a satisfactory answer. Now I understand why, as I see the sycophants of al-Assad and Putin defend their horrific actions. And the sycophants have been rewarded. Al-Assad's genocidal actions against innocent protesting Sunnis have encouraged jihadists from around to world to join ISIS and other jihadist organizations. We can now see how stupidity brings about disaster.

When refugees began crossing borders in 2011, they were treated with sympathy and given the aid that they needed. But as the hundreds of refugees have grown into thousands, then tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands, their welcome has worn thin, and they're straining the resources of the neighboring countries. Syrians are willing to work for low wages, forcing everyone's wages down. Rents are rising because of the refugees, and schools and hospitals are becoming crowded. The refugees complain of discrimination, abuse, and sexual exploitation by landlords and merchants.

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

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

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

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

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Dec-14 World View -- World Food Program terminates aid to 1.7 million Syrian refugees thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (2-Dec-2014) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 2-Dec-2014 2-Dec-14 World View -- World Food Program terminates aid to 1.7 million Syrian refugees

World Food Program terminates aid to 1.7 million Syrian refugees

Syrian refugees increasingly threaten regional stability

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 2-Dec-2014
2-Dec-14 World View -- World Food Program terminates aid to 1.7 million Syrian refugees