The Refugees of the Arab Spring

Ayra Joyce Abdo

COR 330-11

Final Paper

The Refugees of the Arab Spring

The Arab Spring is seen as a democratic movement. Young citizens of Arabic countries were pouring out into the streets demanding political freedom from their regimes. News stations stopped focusing on the Arab Spring once rulers stepped down. However, that was just the beginning for the citizens. Since 2011, Syria, Libya, and Yemen have been unstable, many of their citizens are fleeing their countries in hope of a better life elsewhere. This could possibly threaten the stability of the countries that the refugees are fleeing to, even if they managed to survive the Arab Spring (Guzansky and Striem). 

When refugees flee their native country they expect their situation to get better. However, for most refugees they end up in a country that is just slightly more stable than where they left. Egypt, a country that also went through its own Arab Spring, hosts approximately 125,000 Syrian refugees along with thousands of refugees from Libya and Sudan. About a quarter million Kurds from Syria have taken refuge in Iraq, a country that is experiencing its own political instability. The Turkish government has begun to construct a fence along the border to prevent potential refugees from arriving. Jordan’s economy has been heavily burdened by the high flow of refugees. Lebanon has refused to build permanent camps for Syrian refugees in fear that the camps would encourage refugees to remain longer than necessary (Guzansky and Striem).

Syria has the largest number of displaced citizens since the Arab Spring. Approximately 9 million Syrians left their homes since the civil war began in March 2011. They found refuge in neighboring countries or in other areas of Syria. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found that about 2.5 million Syrians fled to immediate neighboring countries Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. 6.5 million refugees are internally displaced within Syria. Less than 100,000 Syrians have declared asylum in Europe. A small number has been offered resettlement by countries like Germany and Sweden (“Home”).

As a result of more than 700,000 deaths, Syrians are afraid to stay home. The violence in Syria has gone on for long and taken so many forms of inhumanity. The political unrest has created divisions among its citizens that didn’t exist prior to the civil war. Even if plans are made to better the situation it is difficult to picture Syria and its citizens moving past this episode of cruelty any time soon. The violence in Syria doesn’t mean that the Arab Spring failed. The civil war is a testament to the frustration that Syrian citizens feel. The upcoming years will be an important indicator of what will happen to Syria (Lynch).

Like many of the leaders in the Arab world, Gaddafi believed that Libya was immune to protests. He wasn’t aligned to the West like Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak were so he felt comfortable with his situation. Gaddafi believed that he had control of his citizens (Noueihed and Warren 177).

With hindsight, perhaps Gaddafi’s biggest error was the language he used to threaten the rebels. His now infamous pledge to go ‘zanga zanga, dar dar’ or from ‘alley to alley, house to house’ to ‘cleanse’ the ‘rats’ and ‘cockroaches’ carried echoes of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when Hutus described the Tutsis in similarly insect-like terms (Noueihed and Warren 179).

Gaddafi learned that not only did he not have control of his citizens, but that Western countries wanted him out of power. On March 18^th 2011, French jets launched air strikes against Gaddafi’s troops outside of Benghazi. Other armed forces quickly joined. The United States and British militaries bombed military depots, enforced a no-fly zone and set up a naval blockade. The United States played a lesser role than Britain and France, but their support was vital. Anything that was seen as threatening to civilians was fair game because the foreign troops wanted the people out on the streets to topple the weakened regime. Foreign troops hoped it would only take weeks, but it took months and divided the country into two parts, areas that Gaddafi controlled and areas that he didn’t. Gaddafi believed that his lack of involvement with the West would be his saving grace; instead that is ultimately what toppled him over (Noueihed and Warren 183).

The violence in Libya left many people without a home or a way to make a living. In September 2011, six months after the intervention began, between 30,000 and 50,000 Libyans had been killed (Noueihed and Warren 185). By August 2011, approximately 656,000 citizens fled Libya. As a result of Western intervention in the Libyan revolution the United Nations (UN) refugee agency was able to swiftly respond to this large population. The UN sent teams to both Egypt and Tunisia since many Libyan refugees fled to those neighboring countries. The Tunisian government specifically asked the UN and its partners to build refugee camps close to the border to keep refugees from infiltrating more of the country. With the help of the UN the Libyan refugees had minimal impact on the Egyptian and Tunisian government (“North Africa Humanitarian Situation”).

Until 2012, Yemen only had one president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Yemen is the poorest state in the Arab world. Yemen has an illiteracy rate of 50% and an unemployment rate of 35%. Infrastructure barely exists outside of major cities, and even there it’s quite possible that it has been blown up (Gelvin 70). Yemen’s landscape makes it hard to control since two-thirds of the people live scattered and isolated in villages that are beyond easy access by the government (Gelvin 74). Yemen has the most heavily armed population in the Arab world, making it easy to understand how the protests turned violent. The military openly fired at the Yemeni citizens. This helped instigate the current civil war that Yemen is in (Gelvin 84).

Yemen continues to be the most heavily droned country in the world. This causes even more instability in a weak nation that is barely kept together. Regardless of this many refugees seek refuge in Yemen. Yemeni citizens flee their homes and move to other places in Yemen. As a result of mass chaos in Yemen it is hard to find true numbers on the refugee crisis in Yemen. However, as of mid-2013 the number of Yemeni refugees was believed to be 407,718 (“Yemen”). Between 5,000 to 10,000 rebels have had an effective guerilla insurgency against the Yemen government. They fight with rockets, grenades, machine guns and roadside bombs to cause serious injuries to Yemeni military members. Several thousand people have been killed as a result of this conflict. According to Unicef, an estimated 250 Yemeni children die from malnutrition everyday. The conflicts in Yemen have caused serious problems for their citizens (Macleod).

The refugee crisis following the Arab Spring has inflicted political stress on neighboring nations. There is fear that the continued influx of refugees entering countries like Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey will cause those countries to have uprisings themselves. International aid can only do so much to keep financial impact to a minimum. Syrians continue to flee their country daily. Libyan refugees refuse to return to their homes. Yemeni citizens continue to fight for their rights and safety daily. The number of refugees just continues to rise. Refugees are unable to live normal lives since they know where they are currently is only temporary. Refugees deserve to go back home to place where civil war hasn’t torn apart everything they had to live for (Guzansky and Striem).