With half of Syria’s population displaced in the worst refugee crisis since World War II, according to the United Nations, and Europe overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of people flooding the continent, accusations are flying as to why the wealthy Gulf states are not welcoming people with whom they share a common language and heritage.
Gulf states have cited possible security concerns, and worries that Syrians might eventually compete for jobs. But to the Syrians, the answer is simple: they are not welcome.
“Gulf countries have closed their doors in the face of Syrians,” Yassir Batal, a Syrian refugee who fled to Germany, told Bloomberg.
The voyage to Europe necessitates a dangerous and often disastrous ending for the refugees. They must pay smugglers exorbitant fees for space on either overcrowded rubber dinghies or unseaworthy vessels, and thousands end up drowning in the Mediterranean Sea.
But the only Arab countries Syrians may enter without a visa are Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen.
In theory, Syrians can enter the Gulf states if they have either a work permit or a tourist visa, but the refugees believe that there are unwritten restrictions in place that make it difficult or impossible to obtain a visa in practice, BBC Monitoring reported. Even in the best of conditions, the process of obtaining a visa is costly.
The Gulf states say they aren’t open to accepting more refugees because of security concerns. Most Syrian refugees that are in the Gulf states are there because they’ve overstayed their work visas.
It is virtually impossible to gain citizenship in a Gulf state, and these countries favor hiring unskilled workers from Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the BBC reported. The Syrians, who are usually fairly well educated, would compete with jobs with Gulf state locals.
Despite these barriers being put in place by Gulf states, there are also reasons why Syrians aren’t seeking out refuge in those countries. Although they are escaping the terror of Islamic State militants and a country wrecked by chemical weapons from an ongoing, five-year civil war, Syria was a remarkably free and educated country in its heyday. Syria’s capital, Damascus, was once the “playground” in the region, a city where alcohol, Western dress and education were freely available.
The Gulf states, on the other hand, have harsh laws restricting citizens’ freedoms to talk, dress, and interact. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, women are not allowed to drive cars. And in Qatar, people can be fined for uncovering their knees, cuddling, or playing a song with “indecent phrases.”
For their part, the Gulf states say they are not indifferent to Syrians’ suffering and point to the billions of dollars of aid and the camps they have set up in Jordan and Lebanon. The United Arab Emirates spent $540 million in relief aid to set up a camp in Jordan and another in northern Iraq, a U.A.E. official told Bloomberg.
But after photos of a Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach went viral this week and prompting worldwide attention, many Arabs took to social media to express their outrage that Islamic countries failed to do more for their own brethren.
The hashtag #Welcoming_Syria’s_refugees_is_a_Gulf_duty in Arabic was tweeted over 33,000 times on Twitter in the past week, reports BBC Monitoring. Several tweets point out the hypocrisy of Arab leaders pointing to Europe to do more when they, who share a language, heritage and religion in common with the refugees, do nothing to help.
A cartoon published in Saudi Arabia showed an Arab behind a shut door guarded with barbed wire berating a European for not opening his door to the refugees. “Why don’t you let them in, you discourteous people?!” he says.
“Have consciences died? Why can’t able countries like [the] Gulf nations take part in hosting refugees?” Salman Aloda, a popular Saudi cleric tweeted.
A commander of the Free Syrian Army retweeted an image of refugees and the message of a former Kuwaiti member of parliament, Faisal al-Muslim: “Oh countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, these are innocent people and I swear they are most deserving of billions in aid and donations,” BBC reported.
On Facebook, the Syrian Community in Denmark community page shared a video of migrants being welcomed into Austria from Hungary, “prompting one user to ask: ‘How did we flee from the region of our Muslim brethren, which should take more responsibility for us than a country they describe as infidels?'”
Another user replied: ‘I swear to the Almighty God, it’s the Arabs who are the infidels,’ reported the BBC.
As Europe weighs how to deal with the massive crisis at their doorstep — economically strapped Greece absorbed 142,000 refugees since June 1 — European leaders have also pointed bitterly to the Gulf states’ indifference.
“I’m most indignant over the Arab countries who are rolling in money and who only take very few refugees,” Danish Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen told Bloomberg. “Countries like Saudi Arabia. It’s completely scandalous.”
