Why is the migrant crisis erupting now?

Asylum seekers in desperate need of help

After more than 4 years of fighting in Syria and also across the Middle East and North Africa, what has provoked this new influx of asylum seekers into Europe?
They flee a country at war where the West resists any major military or political engagement.
They flee a country where NATO-led forces fought for more than a decade to achieve stability.
The stories of Syria and Afghanistan are two cautionary tales of our time.
Old wars don’t end. New ones get worse.
No matter what the world’s great powers did or did not do, growing numbers of Syrians and Afghans are taking their future into their own hands. They make up the two largest groups in this mass displacement of people across Europe and beyond.
Never has there has been such an ingathering of people sending the most pointed public message to their own leaders and the world at large: 'You failed.'


A Syrian man holds a sign declaring his gratitude to German Chancellor Angela Merkel

It’s the people’s version of the Live Aid concert organised by the world’s musicians 30 years ago to raise money for the Ethiopian famine.
This time, people are no longer waiting for a more peaceful and privileged world beyond to come to them with aid. They’re coming to that better safer place themselves - no matter what it takes.
And as this human stream rushes unabated, it starts to change course and political colour.
Now there are growing numbers of Iraqis, the other major international engagement of the decade past. Eritreans flee well-documented repression, Somalis escape a chronic instability that is now a way of life and even Pakistanis are on the move to get out of harm’s way at home.



'Is there a war in Pakistan?' I ask two men who also spill out of a bus packed with Syrians and Afghans when it pulls up to the last muddy crossing in northern Greece on the Macedonian border.
'Bombs are exploding around Lahore,' one young man insists, bowing his head to show me what he says is a scar on the back of it.

No easy divide
This seemingly unending flow of people making perilous journeys across the Mediterranean and running the gauntlet across northern Europe underlines how difficult distinctions and decisions will have to be made between refugees with a 'well-founded fear of persecution' and those with an understandable desire to seek a better life.
But the neat binary divide between economic migrants and refugees no longer fits a messy world of fragile and failing states and 'post-conflict' conflicts.
Many countries, including the United States, Britain and Canada, have made it clear they are now only opening their door to allow in thousands, possibly tens of thousands, more Syrians.


Sami Khazi Kani is trying for the second time to reach the West

'Its absolutely unfair,' Sami Khazi Kani declares as he waits for his turn to cross the last metal barrier manned by Greek police.
He tried and failed a decade ago to get asylum in Britain. When he was deported to Afghanistan his risks only grew when his English language skills landed him a job as an interpreter for US troops. Now he’s trying to reach the West again.
'The Taliban are killing us, the Taliban are kidnapping us,' he says bitterly. 'But the media only broadcast what is happening in Syria.'
Taliban attacks are on the rise in Afghanistan but Syria is undeniably the war of our time. It’s a country so ravaged that many dare to state the unspeakable: that Syria as we knew it is no more.
This is a place where more than half the population of 22 million people is displaced, dead or a refugee.


Migrant crisis in graphics

’Burden sharing’It’s also described as the largest, most expensive aid operation of modern times.
Even before this current crisis erupted, the world’s major aid agencies had repeatedly warned that the global humanitarian system was at breaking point, cracking under the weight of Syria as well as protracted conflicts in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Iraq and more.
'Burden sharing' has been the buzzword in aid circles for many months with growing calls for wealthy Gulf states to do more and for countries in all corners of the world to play their part.
Some countries are doing more and giving more but even the most high-profile aid operations like Syria keep running out of cash .
'Don’t say there is no solution to what is a man-made crisis,' Jan Egeland, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council told me a year ago. 'There are more than 190 countries in the world.'

There is no humanitarian solution for this tragic humanitarian crisis
Antonio Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees

Now there’s a call for quotas among European nations to share responsibility for about 160,000 refugees, mainly from Syria. But it may not work.
So when Western politicians say people must stay where they are, to be helped closer to home, their pleas now ring hollow. Governments in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, hosting the overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees, are under mounting strain.
The head of the UN’s Refugee Agency, Antonio Guterres, has repeatedly invoked one mantra: 'There is no humanitarian solution for this tragic humanitarian crisis.' The only real solution is political.

Maps and groups
And yet, even as this crisis explodes with unprecedented human force, the fate of one man, Bashar al-Assad, seems to matter more, to all sides, than the fate of 22 million people.
Russia and Iran are rushing to bolster the government’s increasingly embattled position. Western powers focus on ramping up air strikes.


 Greek police man the metal barriers
The UN’s new political plan is a long-term process of working groups to study a 'roadmap for peace' to try to encourage warring sides to come to the negotiating table.
But Syrians, worried that aid is running out, fearful of multiplying threats from extremist forces like ISIS, and losing hope that this war will ever end, are deploying their own maps and groups: Google maps from the internet to chart their journey to Europe and Facebook groups to get advice from those who’ve gone before.
And many others from many places are coming with them.
'Are you sure you will be offered asylum?' I ask a young Iraqi man from Baghdad who tells me he’s exhausted after a journey that’s already lasted 10 days just to get him to northern Greece.
'I am sure,' he says confidently on a cold, dark night as the rain pours down on the open field. He covers his head with some plastic sheeting offered by some local volunteers and rushes to catch up with the next group making its way across a short no-man’s land towards the next border.
A slogan once brandished in what was called the Arab Spring seems to have resonance again: 'The power of the people is greater than the people in power.'
But the lesson of that earlier moment was that those in power still have the ability to determine the people’s chances to succeed, or fail.

Quds force of Iran Bankrupt

By Iran Reporter

Head of the terrorist Quds force of Iran's  (IRGC), QassemSoleimani told parliament on Sunday the armed forces need a bigger budget to confront the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group whose influence is growing in neighboring countries.General Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan who commands Iran’s ground forces told parliament: "We have to face a new threat in the region. Terrorist groups are close to our borders,” media reported.

Iran’s army forces must be strengthened to be able “to buy tanks, transport vehicles and to overhaul our helicopters,” he was quoted as saying.
The Iranian general, who warned that “the battle is on the ground,” did not say by how much the defense budget should be increased!!
For the fiscal year ending in March 2016, the defense budget was increased by more than 30% to reach some $10 billion dollars. In addition, the armed forces receive $1.2 billion from sovereign funds.
Pourdastan told parliament that when ISIS launched its offensive in Iraq in June last year jihadists advanced to Jalula, just 40 kilometers from the Iranian border.“In less than three days, we sent five brigades to the borders and our reconnaissance helicopters penetrated 40 kilometers into Iraq,” Pourdastan added.
Meanwhile, Iran has reportedly sent troops to Iraq to join Shiite militants, U.S. defense officials said, according to AP. The Islamic Republic, which sent small troops to allow Iraqi forces retake the major oil refinery of Beiji, also sent heavy weapons for Iraqi ground forces, one of the officials said.
U.S. President Barack Obama said his country does not oppose the intervention of Iran in the Iraqi conflict as long as it operates under the control of Iraq’s government. However, he did not mention Iran’s role on the Beiji operation.
Shiite regional power Iran has military advisers in Iraq and Syria and provides financial and military support to the governments of both countries in their fight against the Sunnis.
But there has been a big question non-responded during the four past decades, "Why Iranian Ayatollahs need to export their so-called revolution to Iraq as well as Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and even to the horn of Africa while they severely suffer from the international sanctions including their bankrupt economy?  
According to Mujahidin-e-Khalg the main Iranian opposition group in exile, the ruling Ayatollahs in Iran need to export their internal explosive crisis to other countries as a doctrine of Khomeini since the establishment of their medieval regime in 1978. 
The Iranian opposition group who is led by Maryam Rajavi and her political branch in Paris in the name of National council of resistance (NCRI) has named the ruling mullahs in Iran as the God father of terrorism. They think that Arab countries such as Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and … should follow their path. . Their terrorist militias such as Hezbollah of Lebanon and Houthis of Yemen feed and have been fed  by Ayatollahs by Iranian people expenses while there are 15  million Iranian people under the poverty line, therefore , millions of Iranians welcome the heavy storm led by Saudi Arabia  and  his 12 allies . This fundamental regime does not represent Iranian people and should be kept far from Yemen talks, Syria and Gulf on the first step and to be swept from Iran in the near future