Europe is coddling Arab strongmen to keep out refugees
MUCH of Syria lies in ruins, but Bashar al-Assad's bureaucracy of repression
hums along. Earlier this year a pro-opposition website published a list of Syrians
wanted by the regime. The database is both staggering in scope-1.5m people. or 7%
of the pre-war population-and incompelete. Jamil Hassan, the head of the air-force
intelligence service, is said to have told senior officers in July that he wants to arrest
twice that number. On August 9th another regime official announced that 100,000 Syrians
have died of "unknown causes" since 2017. Many were torture to death in Mr Assord's
dungeons. Yet European politicians are debating whether to send refugees back to
this brutal oubliette.
Seven years ago, when Arabs revolted against their autocratic rulers, European leaders
engaged in a collective mea culpa.Decades of working with dictators had not created
a stable, prosperous Arab world. From now on, democracy and human rights would be the
cornerstones of the European Union's Middle East policy, they vowed. But the high-mindedness
was short-lived. Driven by a fear of migrants, European governments have once again embraced
strongmen.
Without a political transition in Syria, the EU refuses to help the regime rebuild the
battle-scorched country. But some members states, eager to see refugees go home,
want to do it anyway. Russian diplomats have offered to do it help repatriate migrants
in exchange for construction materials and money, and the proposal is getting some attention in
European capitals. "It's going to be very difficult to keep the consensus on this issue," admits a
diplomat in Brussels. Politicians from Germany and Denmark have visited regime-held Syria to
assess if it is "safe"; the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party says it is.
In Libya, where EU members helped overthrow Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, they now work with
warlords to round up migrants, Italy has paid off local militias, which hold migrants in abysmal
conditions. Torture and rape are common. France's president, Emmanuel Macron, wants Libya's
feuding factions to elections in December. He claims it will stabilise the country. It is more
likely to shatter a fragile UN-baked transition and boost Khalifa Haftar, the strongman who rules
the east. The EU's own election observers say the vote will be too unsafe to monitor. But Mr Macron
thinks it will help keep African migrants off French soil.
The EU set a precedent in 2016 when it asked Turkey's authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
to limit the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, He got $6bn in aid and visa-free travel
to EU for some of his citizens. "Arab states saw there was a kind of hysteria, and they knew they
could play that card too," says an official at the European External Action Service, the EU's
diplomatic corps.
In June the Speaker of Egypt's parliament, Ali Abdel Aal, led a delegation to Brussels. His
government holds thousands of political prisoners and the world's number-three jailer
of journalists. Questioned about this, Mr Aal offered a laughable defence. Locking up
bloggers and activists, he argued, would mean fewer negative stories about Egypt, and
thus more tourists. Pressed further, he turned to a familiar argument. Egypt is a country of 97m
people just 220 miles from the EU. the threat was obvious: if you thought the Syrian refugee crisis
was bad, imagine what would happen if Egypt collapsed.
Such scaremongering is effective. The EU has offered only tepid criticism of Egypt's army-backed
government. Until this summer, none of it was aired publicly. Britain and France have welcomed the
president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, for official visits. Even Italy is pursuing closer ties-despite the
torturing to death in 2016 of an Italian graduate student in Cairo, probably by the police.
"The EU is acting like the junior partner," complains one Egyptian activist.
"Even Trump is tougher on Egypt."
The conditions that sent millions of Arabs across the Mediterranean still exist.Egypt's population
is young, poor and restless. Militias in Libya today can be just as brutal as Mr Qaddafi's regime
was. And Mr Assad, needless to say, is not a stabilising force. The EU might succeed in sending
some refugees home. More will come.