Tarek Fatah: Who is to Blame for the Drowning of Alan Kurdi, the Boy on the Beach?
We cannot lose sight of the Syrian Revolution that began as protests in the early spring of 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. Instead of paying heed to his people, President Bashar al-Assad unleashed his military forces in violent crackdowns that forced 3.2 million people to flee the country and internally displaced 6.5 million others. Alan was just the latest victim.
A single photograph
of a three-year old boy named Alan Kurdi, lying dead on a Turkish beach,
has rocked the conscience of the world. The picture will remain seared in our collective memory
forever, just as the image of a nine-year-old girl running naked on a road
after being severely burned on her back in a napalm bomb attack shook us up on
June 8, 1972. That was Phan Thi Kim Phuc, who later settled down in Canada.
Despite what was initially reported by Canadian media, Alan
Kurdi was never headed to Canada. His aunt in Vancouver, Tima Kurdi, tried to sponsor Alan’s
uncle and family under what is known as a “G5 privately sponsored application
for asylum.” Citizenship Minister Chris Alexander personally took up her
application after receiving it from Fin Donnelly, the MP for Port
Moody-Coquitlam.
However, because the UN in its wisdom wouldn’t register the
Kurdi family as refugees, and because the Turkish government wouldn’t grant
them exit visas (as they didn’t have passports), the application for asylum in
Canada couldn’t proceed any further. With no legal options, the family did what tens of thousands
of refugees in Turkey have done — they took a risky boat ride from Bodrum in a
flotilla of dinghies headed for the Greek island of Kos. The boat capsized
about 30 minutes after it set off. Alan, his brother Ghalib, 5, their mother
Rehan, and many others drowned.
It’s a tragedy that should have brought out the best in all
of us. Unfortunately, the New Democrats and Liberals tried to use
it to attack Chris Alexander and the Conservatives and depict them as heartless
and cruel, in the most unethical and immoral manner.
To understand the calamity unfolding in the Mediterranean,
illustrated by the photograph of Kurdi, we need to step back a century, but
even a year is helpful. In essence, it’s the story of a Kurdish family that fled an
Arab country after an Islamist attack and took refuge across the border in
Turkey, a country known for its hostility towards its own Kurdish population.
In the words of the boy’s aunt in Vancouver, the treatment
of her family in Turkey was “horrible.” Instead of targeting the most visible and apparent villains
in this drama — the Assad regime in Syria, the Turks, ISIS, Saudi Arabia and
Qatar — the Liberals and the NDP sharpened their knives and went after
Alexander, the very man who has been quietly helping people escape tyranny and
settle down in Canada.
We cannot lose sight of the Syrian Revolution that began as
protests in the early spring of 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. Instead of
paying heed to his people, President Bashar al-Assad unleashed his military
forces in violent crackdowns that forced 3.2 million people to flee the country
and internally displaced 6.5 million others. Alan was just the latest victim.
Hadi Elis, spokesman for the Kurdish Community Centre of
Toronto, told me he was shocked how Trudeau and an NDP MP from B.C. used Alan’s
tragic death to attack Alexander.
“Minister Alexander has been one of the strongest allies of
the Kurdish community and stood by the Syrian Kurds in their darkest hour in
Kobani from where the boy and his family fled in the face of attacks on them by
Islamist ISIS and their Turkish allies,” Elis wrote in an e-mail. “It is despicable for Liberal and NDP politicians to use the
dead boy as a political tool to score partisan political points. Shame on them.
They want Canada to stop attacking ISIS, and then shed crocodile tears when a
victim of ISIS drowns on a Turkish beach,” he continued.
“If there is anyone who is guilty of this crime, it is
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UN, all those who have refused to embrace
hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war, not Minister Chris Alexander who
needs no lectures on compassion by politicians who are catering to the
Islamists inside Canada.” Neither the NDP nor the Liberals dare say a single word
against Turkey, Saudi Arabia or even Pakistan for fear of losing the imagined
Muslim vote in Canada’s large riding-rich cities. Instead, by depicting the
Conservatives and Alexander as anti-refugee and anti-Muslim, they hope to
harvest a supposed rich crop of pro-Islamist voters.
It’s possible they might even succeed in this venture given
the way many mainstream media outlets have formed a lynch mob targeting the
Conservatives with disdain and shameless partisanship. Canadian voters, on the other hand, must recognize the
stories they’re reading or watching also reflect an illiteracy and ignorance
among Canada’s chattering heads on matters of the Middle East and South Asia —
ignorance they cover up by ensuring no one with a background in the area is
given the opportunity to challenge what wrongly passes for objective and
balanced discourse.
The fact is all these refugees fleeing war zones in the Arab
World could very easily be accommodated in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Instead, while Turkey wants to dump them in the sea and hope
bleeding-heart, guilt-ridden liberal Europeans embrace them and pay for their
resettlement, the Saudis have an even simpler solution: Shut down the border
and seal it so not a single Alan Kurdi dare walk across from Iraq or the new
“Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” into its territory. Period.
Strictly from a management perspective and common sense,
Saudi Arabia has the land, the resources and lies in the vicinity of the
crisis. The refugees and the Saudis speak the same language and settlement and
integration could happen sooner and at a fraction of the cost.
But it’s far easier to call for the head of Chris Alexander
than to be honest and admit the villain in the drama is Saudi Arabia and
criticising the Saudis might upset the Islamist vote bank both the Liberals and
the NDP covet.
