Refugees, EU meddling in the Muslim world

Our Own Correspondent

Ramadan 14, 1436 2015-07-01

News & Analysis

by Our Own Correspondent (News & Analysis, Crescent International Vol. 44, No. 5, Ramadan, 1436)

The much-hyped refugee problem with boatloads of people streaming out of North Africa and the Middle East is the direct result of EU-Western meddling in Muslim affairs.

Since the Islamic Awakening movements (aka the Arab Spring) were launched at the end of 2010, interference by NATO regimes in the socio-political processes of the Muslim world has escalated alarmingly, producing some unintended headaches for many of these regimes. One of the unintended consequences is the mass migration of people from war torn and oppressive countries in the Muslim world to Europe. Analyzing the European media’s coverage and statements by policy makers and academia, the EU’s selfish concern for these refugees — dubbed migrants — shows that this is a manifestation of the massive deception campaign.

The EU’s official position on increased immigration to Europe is a fraud, as its decision makers know well that these refugees would not be abandoning the safety of their homes en masse and embark on a highly perilous journey to Western Europe without the EU’s destructive meddling in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and other countries. Such meddling, however, did not start with the Islamic Awakening; it has gone on for decades, if not longer.

For instance, the EU played a crucial role in supporting General Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali’s regime and tried to project it as a “model of stability and secularism.” The British daily, the Guardian report from January 2011 highlighted how former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was made an honorary citizen in Tunis in 2008 and praised the Ben Ali government for expanding liberties in Tunisia. His culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, reported by the French media to have had Tunisian citizenship conferred on him by Ben Ali, said (see Crescent International, January 2011) that Tunisia was being unfairly criticized, “To say that Tunisia is a one-man dictatorship seems to me quite exaggerated.” Sarkozy’s opposition, too, has a record of praise for the deposed dictator. The IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn [since disgraced], tipped to challenge Sarkozy for the French presidency next year, praised Ben Ali’s Tunisia as a model for other emerging countries during a visit to Tunis in 2008 (Crescent, 2012).

Even after Ben Ali’s overthrow and his escape to “Saudi” Arabia, the European Union lifted sanctions against relatives of the former Tunisian dictator. In 2013, Faysal Ajina, advisor to Tunisia’s Justice Minister, said that “…the majority of European countries have refused to cooperate in recovering the stolen money.”

The question is, are EU policy makers unaware that their meddling in the Muslim East is creating more chaos and problems than would otherwise be the case? They are fully aware and this is their strategic imperialist aim, to create as much chaos as possible in the Muslim world in order to prevent these states from gaining true independence, free from the debilitating influence of the West.

Even though the refugee/immigration issue is a problem for the EU, when properly staged by the media, it actually plays into the hands of EU policy makers as it allows them to project their soft-power. It makes them appear “benevolent” and “civilized” and also blame the economic and many other domestic problems in their societies on “immigrants.”

The EU policy makers assume they can manage the refugee problem until they firmly install al-Sisi type autocrats in Tunisia, Syria and Libya. This is a major miscalculation that will backfire sooner than most people realise. The situation in Libya and Europe’s participation in facilitating the arrival of takfiri terrorists in Syria has created problems that will not disappear any time soon. In fact the takfiris will begin shifting their criminal activities into the EU and become active in the EU in order to gain more “legitimacy” among their own marginal constituency. This, in parallel with growing tensions with Russia is creating a mix of strategic problems for the EU that will unravel in a very unpredictable manner.

As this happens, what should Muslim states and socio-political organizations do? By adopting a neutral stand on refugees/immigration, they could pressure the EU into ending its destructive meddling in the affairs of the Muslim world. In order to implement this policy wisely, socio-political organizations in the Muslim world must inform EU citizens of this leverage and urge them to demand from their governments to end their disruptive and destructive meddling and support for autocratic regimes and unruly militias if they want cooperation on the refugee crisis in the EU.

By not acting as EU’s barriers and prison camps for refugees seeking safety in the EU, Muslim societies could use their neutrality on the immigration issue as leverage in ending the EU’s illegitimate meddling in the Muslim East and North Africa.