Crescent International
The tragic situation of refugees on the Belarussian-Polish border continues to make headlines.
It is now becoming clear that the refugee factor will be frequently used as direct political leverage on a global scale.
Prior to the current crisis, the refugee factor, in humanitarian, political and economic terms was considered collateral damage inflicted by Western regimes on others.
This resulted from direct military aggression or by supporting corrupt autocracies driving citizens abroad to uncertainty as refugees.
The brazen Belarussian technique of funneling refugees towards Europe altered the repercussions of collateral damage.
True, the Alexander Lukashenka regime is using innocent people as pawns, the root cause why people are forced to leave en masse their home countries in West Asia is due to aggressive and neo-colonialist Western policies.
It would not be an exaggeration to state that some governments in the developing world have now figured out NATO’s soft spot.
The use of refugees as a political tool will unfortunately increase.
Hitherto, the refugee factor was a secondary deterrent of destructive policies.
For example, one of the reasons Western regimes did not push for pro-longed military conflict in Ukraine is because of the refugee factor.
Ukraine is in Europe and a mass scale military conflict there, with Russia involved would create a massive refugee problem.
Turkey has positioned itself as a middle player.
It is leveraging its cooperative relationship with Russia against NATO and its NATO membership against Russia and China.
Ankara is likely to coordinate its refugee leverage with Moscow in any future escalation with the West.
Turkey and Russia have geographic openings to Europe and both have shown political determination in using the refugees when frictions with Western regimes escalate.
Western Europe will not be the only one affected by the refugees.
Russia has its own massive refugee vulnerability.
While Turkey and other Muslim countries are somewhat accustomed to handling the refugee crisis due to decades of destructive Western policies, a refugee crisis for Russia could be highly destabilizing.
One of the key reasons Moscow is sensitive to external interference in the regions of the former Soviet Union is due to its fear of the refugee factor.
This is especially true in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Presence of small, but violently active fascist groups in Russia, whose reaction to the influx of refugees will be quite destabilizing, can open a window for external interference in Russia.
This is something Kremlin will not like.
While the Belarussian-Polish border crisis is a symptom of today’s malfunctioning and unravelling of the West-centric global order, it can also serve as a great political deterrent.
Due to the realities of the contemporary world where masses have access to rapid means of transportation and almost instant communication technologies, the Western regimes can no longer remain unscathed from social and political repercussions of tragedies they instigate in West Asia.
This realization may serve as a deterrent from repeating aggressions like in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Zahra Hussain says Canada’s example in welcoming Syrian refugees puts to shame Arabian regimes like Saudi Arabia.
Letter writer Tahira Parveen suggests that we should look at those countries causing the crises that force people to flee their home to unde...
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