By Rab Bruce’s Spider

David Cameron says the real solution to the refugee crisis is to end the war they are fleeing from. OK, that is perfectly sensible but he seems not to have considered how this might be achieved. So far, Britain’s contribution to peace-making has been to bomb ISIS which hasn’t exactly proved successful, just as many critics, including this blog site, predicted.

The problem is that the war in Syria is extremely complicated and the original sentiment of wanting President Assad ousted has been put to one side because the only viable alternative at the moment appears to be ISIS.

It’s not as simple as that, of course, since other parties, such as the Kurds and Turkey aren’t all that interested in bringing peace to the area. The Kurds want their own, independent State and Turkey is quite happy to see its neighbour Syria in turmoil, especially as it can earn a lot of money from allowing the transit of arms and oil to and from Syria.

By general consensus, though, ISIS is the biggest problem and it’s largely a problem of the West’s making. This brutal regime arose to fill the power vacuum created by the US / UK invasion of Iraq. It has increased its power and the extent of territory under its control because those opposing it lack either the military power or the political will to destroy it. Not that it’s all that easy to destroy any large group of people, of course. However, the only way the US and UK can ever hope to defeat ISIS is through a large scale land war by sending in thousands of troops. That simply isn’t going to happen because the general public won’t stand for it unless the Governments create some excuse which is more plausible than the infamous WMD dossier Tony Blair and his cronies created. In any event, large scale wars in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan haven’t exactly turned out well in the past and the previous Iraqi conflict is what created this problem in the first place.

So what is the solution? Quite frankly, there probably isn’t one. The Middle East has been in turmoil ever since the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 when Britain and France drew lines on a map and then installed pro-Western Governments to rule the new States they had created in complete defiance of actual tribal and ethnic geography.

That’s not to say all the blame lies with the West. Countries like Saudi Arabia have taken no refugees from Syria at all because they are too busy bombing Yemen and stoking the civil war in that country. Israel is too intent on destroying the Palestinian proto-State in Gaza by slow strangulation and would never aid Arab refugees anyway, while Egypt’s military dictatorship has more than enough internal problems to bother itself with other countries’ wars.

But Europe isn’t exactly covering itself in glory here. Turkey, for all its aggressiveness towards Kurds and others, has taken two million refugees while tiny Lebanon has taken over 1.5 million, an astonishing number for a country with a population of only around 4 million. Even Germany’s acceptance of tens of thousands of refugees pales into insignificance when compared to the response of these countries. Yet the European nations are happy to let the likes of Lebanon handle enormous numbers of refugees and only pay attention when their own borders become involved.

As for the UK, Cameron’s grudging agreement to accept a few more refugees probably won’t come to much. Britain, as usual, will do the minimum amount possible to help in order to assuage public outrage but will soon do its best to manufacture some other news event so as to distract from this issue and will quietly close the door on admitting too many refugees. It’s a stark contrast to the situation eighty years ago when Jewish refugees flocked here in their efforts to escape the Nazis who, if you recall, came to power when they exploited a political vacuum created by the harsh impositions of a vengeful France and Britain in the Treaty of Versailles. Plus ça change, as the French say.

As for the current situation, Cameron may be right in his view but there is no easy way of achieving peace in Syria and he knows it. His comments were merely a rhetorical device to avoid helping out because accepting what he views as migrants would go against his immigration stance and will upset the UKIP-leaning members of his own Party. As usual for a man with no moral compass whatsoever, he has completely failed to understand that there are times when you need to put politics aside and do the right thing from a humanitarian standpoint.

But it’s easy to criticise so let’s finish this post by trying to make some sort of positive suggestion that might help out. There may well be reasons why this wouldn’t work but it occurs to me that there are hundreds of caravan and camping sites all across the UK. As the summer holiday season draws to a close, many of these will be shutting down for the winter or will be largely empty. Why not allow refugees to occupy static caravans that would otherwise be empty? The Government could pay for the occupation over the next few months until they can sort out more permanent accommodation. Living in a caravan over the British winter may not be ideal but this would solve the immediate problem of where to house these people and would be infinitely better than the ordeals they have already faced.

Whatever we do, though, it needs to be a lot more than we’ve done so far.