The endless waffle and panic about Brexit often seems to hide the on-going horrors of Fortress Europe. The U.N refugee agency, UNHCR says that, “..an unprecedented 65.6 million people (worldwide) were uprooted from their homes by conflict and persecution at the end of 2016,” and that “the rate at which solutions are being found for refugees and internally displaced people has been on a falling trend since the end of the Cold War.” Many of these people are victims of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as is well understood. The destruction of Libya by NATO during it’s seven month bombing campaign in 2011 is much less known or discussed, NATO refuses to acknowledge any civilian casualties from that 60,000 air sortie attack, which they claimed was, “The most successful NATO campaign in history”, a piece of hubris long since removed from their web site.
Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy are all major exporters of weapons and this is a growing trend throughout the 21stC. Weapons sales rise, refugees rise. Economic factors also massively impact, when the western world catches cold as in the 2008 crash the developing world gets pneumonia.
With the USA ramping up it’s armed forces in Africa, especially in Niger (one of the world’s poorest countries) we can expect more conflict and ever more refugees. The current business-as-usual attitudes need to be challenged.
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