So we want a joined-up world but not the people in it. The foreseeable and preventable deaths of hundreds of humans aboard terrifying people-smuggling ships in the Mediterranean this week are testimony to that.
In the neo-liberal version of globalisation, we take resources from countries; invade and colonise them for it. We force developing countries into open trade treaties and make their markets captive to ours.
But then we close our borders when such actions hollow out countries, decimate democracies and force people to flee. And closing Europe’s borders is what has brought the flood of smuggler boats — for people who already face death by staying put will try anything to get somewhere else.
Escalating horrors in the Middle East — disastrous conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya now compounded by the death cult Islamic State — are feeding this desperate passage of fleeing people, the worst since the Second World War. But in these, too, we bear some responsibility.
After all, our Government joined the Nato intervention in Libya in 2011, then left a political vacuum and weaponised militants, resulting in the instability and power struggles that torment the country today.
Iraq was left with a similar power vacuum and hollowed-out infrastructure after the US-UK invasion in 2003 — one of the reasons why IS was able to take hold. Meanwhile, the UK is closely allied to Gulf countries that turned a blind eye to the unofficial supply of weapons private donors funnelled into Syria, prolonging the war, exacerbating it, and reducing the likelihood of a political solution.
Yet still the UK’s inhumane migration policies — stopping the Mediterranean rescue operations last year, while knowing this would mean more deaths at sea — are premised on a total disconnect. It is as though we actually believe the likes of Nigel Farage, who thinks the current catastrophic migrations are someone else’s problem, nothing to do with us.
Europe is gripped by fears of being flooded by helpless, demanding migrants — a terrible distortion designed to make us turn away. As the British Red Cross points out, most refugees don’t flee to Europe, let alone the UK — where only one per cent end up. Last week, the UN high commissioner for refugees noted that the “irresponsible rhetoric” around migration — dehumanising, disparaging, detached — makes it harder for EU politicians to pass measures that will make a difference.
So far this year the UK has taken in only 143 Syrians — at a time when there are some three million Syrian refugees and 6.5 million internally displaced people, in a war-ravaged country with a population of 23 million. At the European level, officials are seemingly too paralysed by squabbles over funds and distribution to tot up human lives to be saved.
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There are immediate measures to stem the Mediterranean tide: reinstate search and rescue teams; raise humanitarian aid; open up legal routes so that people aren’t forced to use exploitative smugglers. But there are deeper issues too, harder, long-term solutions that require honesty and a genuine commitment instead of just lip service — just political solutions to brutal conflicts that have raged for far too long.
We are all joined up in this world and a part of this unimaginable human suffering. It’s time we became a part of the solution, too.
Rachel Shabi is a writer and broadcaster
