Max Ajl: Over 2,500 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean, many from the Libyan and – especially – the Syrian conflict-zones. Syria has about 4 million external refugees, with at least that many internally displaced. Of those 4 million, perhaps 2 million are in Turkey, another 1 million in Lebanon. Some 3,000 refugees come to Hungary every day. The land bridges to Europe are less chancy than sea lanes that rely on ships with a tendency to sink. According to official E.U. counts, over 230,000 have arrived in Greece alone so far this year.
But it is not quite true, as the New York Times editorialized, that, “The roots of this catastrophe lie in crises the European Union cannot solve alone: war in Syria and Iraq, chaos in Libya, destitution and brutal regimes in Africa.”
Ignore for a moment that Afghanistan is the second-largest source of refugees in the world, with at least 2.6 million people in flight. Europe and the United States ravaged Afghanistan in the 2000s, causing directly and indirectly perhaps some 400,000 deaths. But still, putting that to the side, is it really accurate to build analytical walls to accompany the physical ones – Europe over here, over there Africa, with its odd tendency to home-grow destitution and brutality? We should look instead, in the words of Guyanese historian Walter Rodney, to “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.” There is no Europe without Africa, or Africa as it is without Europe as it has done to Africa. More here.