Stop the Syrian war, stop the refugee influx

His name did not appear in agency bulletins. He is also somebody’s son, like the 3-year old Syrian toddler Aylan al-Kurdi whose dead body was swept by the waves of the Aegean Sea to Turkey’s Bodrum shores as the boat carrying them to Greek island of Kos sunk early September 2. 

This one is 13-years-old and he is lucky enough -so far- to make his way to Hungary. He is from Daraa, where the Syrian civil war was started when the Bashar al-Assad government forcers opened fire on civilian protesters in the spring of 2011. His simple words sounded more reasonable than all politicians on earth who are in a blame game in order not to assume responsibility in this human tragedy of Syrian refugees, especially after the shocking photos of the Syrian toddler on the Turkish shore.

“Please help the Syrians” the boy spoke in English, an indication of coming from an educated, urban family. 

“You just stop the war, we won’t want to go to Europe. Just stop the war in Syria.”

His words hit the wires almost at the same time as the words of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, saying “refugees threaten Europe’s Christian roots.” Hungary is likely to raise those concerns at the coming European Union summit that faces the biggest refugee flux the continent has faced since World War II. In the U.K., Prime Minister David Cameron is under fire because of his words found by the British press to be ignoring the human tragedy side of the refugee problem. Finland recently decided to take 750 refugees in 2015, while there are nearly 2 million refugees in Turkey. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to find a more reasonable and responsible way, hoping to find François Hollande’s France as one of the countries among the main targets of the flux. This was especially after the not-so-bright idea of Merkel’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière to establish a refugee camp in Turkey to stop the flux before the gates of the EU. But then why not establish such a camp in Syrian territory, protected by the EU or the U.N. as Turkey has suggested?

Or much better, as the Syrian boy said, why not pay more effort to bring an end to the Syrian war as soon as possible?

It is the Syrian civil war which has given birth to the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), the most notorious terror organization of modern times. An international coalition lead by the U.S. has been carrying out military operations (now fully joined by Turkey) against ISIL for around a year now but little success has been achieved so far; on the contrary, ISIL has captured important towns and cities in both Iraq and Syria during the last year.

The level of their terror causes more people to leave their hometowns in Syria and flee to Europe, risking their lives; they think they have nothing to lose if they stay.

The U.S. Ambassador to Ankara, John Bass, said a solution to Syria would be without Assad in power, in an interview with the CNN Türk channel. But Russia and Iran do not agree, as the main supporters of Assad regime there. But when elephants dance, the grass gets trampled; Syrian people are paying the price. And if the EU makes its choice not according to humanitarian values but to religious ones, it will show an amazing degree of political short sight, which will ruin all of us, not just the EU.