Category Archives: Terror

Invisible Ink in this Iran Deal

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Could it be that this Iran deal had many written parts using invisible ink where formulas have been applied to see the realities?

Iran’s Rohani Opposes Parliament Vote On Nuclear Deal  Iranian President

Hassan Rohani has opposed a parliamentary vote on a landmark nuclear agreement with world powers.

Under the July 14 deal, Western sanctions will be gradually be lifted in return for Iran imposing curbs on nuclear activities, which the West suspects are aimed at making an atomic bomb.

Rohani said at a news conference on August 29 that the accord was a political understanding reached with world powers, not a new pact that requires parliamentary approval.

The parliament has set up a special committee to study the deal.

Rohani said the Supreme National Security Council, the country’s highest security decision-making body, is already studying the agreement.

He also said Iran’s military capability has not been affected by the deal, saying, “We will do whatever we need to do to defend our country, whether with missiles or other methods.”

*** Give Iran a Passing Grade

If the IAEA’s Dec. 15 report is inconclusive, or if Iran challenges the report, Heinonen said, “it’s a heck of a political discussion in this town.”

Enforcing President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran will greatly expand the work of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog and put it in a political spotlight that rivals, if not exceeds, the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

For months, lawmakers and former nuclear inspectors have expressed concerns that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s integrity and independence would be hurt by the pressure of policing Iran’s compliance with a deal in which the world’s most powerful countries have placed so much hope. Those concerns have been reinforced in the wake of reports that the agency may be willing to place an unprecedented level of trust in Iran’s integrity.

“From what we can tell, this inspection arrangement with Iran is far from established practice. It is far from routine, as the Obama administration claims. And it is very far from what we should find acceptable in an agreement so central to our security,” said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The agreement signed July 14 in Vienna between Iran and six major world powers — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — would essentially freeze Iran’s nuclear program for 10 years in exchange for relief from sanctions that have crippled that country’s economy. Iran also agreed never to seek a nuclear weapon, and to accept enhanced monitoring from the IAEA, though Iranian officials dispute what the United States and its partners say that means.

The deal would greatly expand the IAEA’s role in Iran. Director General Yukiya Amano said Tuesday that the agency would need an additional $10.5 million a year to hire more inspectors and obtain new equipment to meet its requirements. Much of that will come from the United States, which provides about a third of the agency’s budget.

The initial and most significant phase of sanctions relief is set to come after the IAEA reports by Dec. 15 on Iran’s compliance with outstanding issues related to past work widely believed to have been aimed at developing a nuclear weapon. The process for resolving those issues is contained in a confidential side deal worked out between the agency and Iran and signed on the same day as the broader nuclear accord.

And that’s where the problem starts.

U.S. lawmakers already were skeptical of the secret side deal, and angry that the agency wouldn’t let them see it, when the Associated Press reported last week that it included an arrangement allowing Iran to use its own inspectors at the Parchin military base, where the United States and other nations believe illicit nuclear weapons work was done in the past.

This highly unusual step was seen by many lawmakers and experts as a bad precedent for future efforts and a sign that the IAEA is under heavy political pressure to ensure Iran meets the bar for sanctions relief.

“If the reporting is accurate, these procedures appear to be risky, departing significantly from well-established and proven safeguards practices,” wrote Olli Heinonen, a former IAEA deputy director, in an analysis for the nonpartisan Iran Task Force. “At a broader level, if verification standards have been diluted for Parchin (or elsewhere) and limits imposed, the ramification is significant as it will affect the IAEA’s ability to draw definitive conclusions with the requisite level of assurances and without undue hampering of the verification process.”

The AP story appeared to verify concerns raised in a July 21 report by the Institute for Science and International Security, whose founder, David Albright, also a former arms inspector, has warned for months that the Iran deal risks forcing the IAEA into a political role for which it is not suited.

“Allowing Iran to stonewall or deceive the IAEA and the E3+3 on the [possible military dimension] issue would significantly weaken the credibility of verification and increase suspicions that Iran is making time-bound concessions to defuse intense international pressure as part of a strategy to maintain its ability to acquire nuclear weapons later,” the report said.

Iran had demanded immediate relief from international sanctions during the two years of talks resulting in the nuclear deal, and much of the pressure to meet that demand has also now fallen on the IAEA. The agreement gives the agency only five months to resolve issues on which Iran has been stonewalling for years so sanctions relief can be implemented. Experts say those issues are crucial to knowing how close Tehran came to developing a nuclear weapon.

“I don’t think the IAEA can come with a conclusive report by Dec. 15. There’s simply not enough time,” Heinonen told the Washington Examiner. “This is a very tight schedule.”

If the IAEA’s Dec. 15 report is inconclusive, or if Iran challenges the report, Heinonen said, “it’s a heck of a political discussion in this town.”

***

Senators supporting the Iran deal may want to reflect long and hard about just what they are endorsing. The faults are many:

  • The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is far weaker than previous non-proliferation agreements with South Africa and Libya.
  • Contrary to White House talking points, the inspection and verification mechanisms are also weaker than previous agreements.
  • The JCPOA provides Iran rewards upfront, allowing it to cheat or walk away from the deal without consequence.
  • Secretary of State John Kerry has apparently acquiesced to Iran conducting its own sampling as the suspect Parchin site, where Iran is alleged to have conducted nuclear weapons work.

Now it’s time to add another problem: Kerry, in his myopic quest for a Nobel Prize, appears to have put China in charge of redesigning the Arak heavy water reactor, where Iran can produce plutonium. According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua (emphasis added):

The accord helps maintain the non-proliferation mechanism and safeguard Iran’s rights on civil nuclear energy, [Foreign Minister] Wang [Yi] said, adding it also “created more favorable conditions for the development of the China-Iran relationship.” China will work closely with Iran to ensure the implementation of the deal and continue to play a positive and constructive role in redesigning the Arak heavy-water reactor and other issues, Wang added.

Given that China has always been North Korea’s number one sponsor, what could go wrong?

Raise Your Hand if You Think You’re Going Back to Iraq

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You’re correct, and it could be a ten year war.

With sequestration and even worse defense contractors without advance platform orders and enemies in the same technology as the United States, ten years is not out of the limits of acceptance. The next commander in chief faces a daunting reality as Islamic State, al Nusra, the Taliban, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Houthis and countless other terror operation cells have nothing but time and a constant flow of new generational fighters.

Listen to the Generals. The new standard before America is the endless war condition, but is the West ready and is Congress or the American people able to dismiss the battlefield weariness? There is no choice. Questions emerge and they include funding for the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) and possibly the draft, if in fact ground operations are needed. Today our troop levels are at a low point near that of pre-World War ll and this calls for some exceptional decisions to be made in the near future. Additionally, conditions could also call for more civilian contractors to be used in both offensive and defensive duties.

There is Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan, Asia and the bigger issue and the bear in the room everyone ignores, Russia.

Throw in Iran…well the future is bleak.

Is the U.S. Ready for an Endless War Against the Islamic State?
op generals predict the fight against ISIS will last more than a decade. It’s not a message the White House or Congress wants to hear.

FP Magazine: Looking out over rows of young American soldiers sitting in a dusty hall in Baghdad, the U.S. military’s top-ranking officer had a few questions for the troops.

Had they deployed to Iraq before, Gen. Martin Dempsey asked.

Out of about 200 soldiers in the hall, three-quarters raised their hands.

“How many of you think you’ll serve a tour in Iraq again?”

They all put up their hands.

“I think you may be right about that,” Dempsey said. “We’re going to be at this for a while.”

The exchange, which came in July during what is likely to be Dempsey’s final visit to Iraq before he steps down in October, captured what top Pentagon brass view as a “generational conflict” against the Islamic State. Despite optimistic assessments from the White House, the generals believe the war will extend far into the future, long after President Barack Obama leaves office.

In an interview with Foreign Policy in July, shortly before stepping down as vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Sandy Winnefeld likened the campaign against the Islamic State to the Cold War.

“I do think it’s going to be a generational struggle,” Winnefeld said.

The Army’s outgoing chief of staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, meanwhile, told reporters that “in my mind, ISIS is a 10- to 20-year problem; it’s not a two years problem.”

But White House officials, and most members of Congress, are reluctant to speak publicly about how long the campaign may last, much to the frustration of military commanders. For members of both political parties, acknowledging that the war could drag on for another 10 to 20 years is politically risky, if not poisonous, and would require confronting difficult decisions about ordering troops into combat, budgets, and strategy.

Instead, the White House has vaguely spoken of a “long-term” effort, without specifically addressing the generals’ expectations of a potentially decade-long war. But officials have acknowledged that the fight will continue after the end of Obama’s presidential term in 2017, leaving his successor with tough choices about whether, and how, to expand the flagging campaign.

While the administration has shied away from talking about precisely how long the war may last, some Republican lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and defense analysts have accused the White House of offering an overly positive account of the faltering campaign.

Now the administration faces explosive allegations that the military may have sought to water down intelligence reports to convey a more optimistic portrayal of the war.

The Defense Department’s inspector general has launched an investigation into the allegations after an analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency alleged that assessments had been revised improperly by U.S. Central Command, according to the New York Times.

The allegations raise questions about the possible politicization of the air campaign and carry echoes of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as officials under then-President George W. Bush were later accused of distorting intelligence reports about suspected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction to bolster the rationale for military action.

The Senate Intelligence Committee “is aware of the allegations that intelligence assessments may have been improperly used or revised,” a staffer for Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the committee, told Foreign Policy on Thursday.

But as the case involves an alleged whistleblower, congressional aides said they could not discuss any aspect of the investigation or whether lawmakers would launch their own separate probe.

Obama has long condemned how intelligence was distorted in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. And in his Aug. 5 speech defending the recently negotiated nuclear agreement with Iran, Obama said the ill-fated U.S. war in Iraq had been the product of “a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported.”

After entering office, Obama vowed to carry out a campaign promise to bring the war in Iraq to “a responsible end” by withdrawing U.S. troops in 2011.

The war, however, did not end on his schedule. Obama has had to send 3,400 troops back to Iraq to help local forces battle the Islamic State, a virulent incarnation of the extremist threat that bedeviled the nearly nine-year U.S. occupation. A U.S.-led air campaign has carried out more than 6,400 strikes against Islamic State targets.

Taken together, that means Obama will leave office with no prospect of an end to the American role in the conflict, which has cost more than $3.7 billion after just one year and has undercut the Pentagon’s plans to “reset” the force after years of grinding counterinsurgency warfare.

While administration officials have been reluctant to offer more specific forecasts about the campaign’s duration, Odierno told reporters in July that the Islamic State will be “a long-term problem” over the next decade or more, though he cautioned that he wasn’t sure about how serious a threat it would be in the years ahead.

Odierno was voicing a widely held view among American commanders, who often privately complain about what they see as a lack of coherent strategic planning from the White House or Congress.

“This is not a two- to three-year task. We’re talking a decade-long effort,” a senior military officer said.

A senior administration official declined to say whether the White House agreed with Odierno’s forecast, saying, “It’s impossible to give any precise answer beyond a long-term schedule.”

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added: “This administration believes the effort should last as long as it takes to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL. There are more than a few variables involved in that.”

There are few signs that the current campaign has turned the tide against the Islamic State in any meaningful way, reinforcing the sense of a long struggle ahead. U.S. officials have touted the success that Iraqi and Kurdish forces, backed by American air power, have had in retaking Tikrit and in recapturing territory in northern Syria, while blunting Islamic State offensives around Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. But the Islamic State still holds broad swaths of Iraq and Syria, including the major Iraqi cities of Mosul and Ramadi, and American intelligence officials estimate that the group has been able to replenish its ranks of fighters and replace those killed by Washington and its allies.

Despite the marked lack of progress, there are no heated policy debates inside the White House now about how to conduct the war against the Islamic State, administration officials and military officers said.

And there is no indication that the White House is planning to revisit its strategy, despite the disappointing results on the ground.

Dempsey and other top military leaders — scarred by the disastrous experience that followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 — are not advocating a radical departure from the current approach, as they do not see a viable alternative without risking another quagmire on the ground.

Administration officials insist that the top generals are not pushing to send in a large force of ground troops or to have special operations commandos embedded with Iraqi troops in combat.

“Our military is not pressing for this,” said a senior administration official familiar with policy discussions, adding that commanders mostly support the current approach.

Most Republican presidential candidates, who castigate Obama for his handling of the Islamic State and promise to take a tougher approach, are also not pressing for the deployment of U.S. combat forces.

Some of them have said they might send special operations forces to accompany Iraqi troops into battle, but the Republicans have offered few details about precisely what they would be willing to do differently and have sidestepped the question of how many years the United States may have to wage war against the Islamic State.

Only one candidate, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), has explicitly called for a major ground force, urging the deployment of at least 10,000 U.S. troops to Iraq and more to Syria.

Graham opposes any limits on U.S. military action against the Islamic State, and his spokesman, Kevin Bishop, said the senator would support “whatever it takes for as long as it takes.”

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia has argued for a more honest public debate about the open-ended war, but he blames the Republican-led Congress for failing to hold a vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq and Syria, his office said.

“In my opinion, this is less about candor on the part of the administration and much more about twelve months of congressional abdication of its most solemn constitutional responsibility — whether or not to send our service members into harm’s way,” Kaine said in an email.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, who is due to take over from Dempsey as chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in October, told lawmakers in July he agreed that a congressional vote to authorize force against the Islamic State would send a signal of unity to allies and adversaries while offering reassurance to troops in the field.

But Congress has opted against a vote that might entail a full-fledged debate on the war and the resources it will require. And the White House has made clear it will stay the course in its military campaign, with no major policy review in the works.

The administration, however, may be open to a more public discussion of the campaign. A senior administration official indicated that the White House may attempt to engage in a broader public discussion of the war later this year, after it is able to shift its focus from the upcoming congressional vote in September on the Iran nuclear agreement.

“Once we get through the Iran nuclear deal, it’s probably time to have a discussion about the broader Middle East,” the official said.

 

Minneapolis is a National Security Risk

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A Terror Suspect on the ‘No Fly’ List Just Got His Trucking License in Minnesota

A Minnesota terror suspect may be on the “No Fly” list, but that hasn’t stopped him from getting his Class A trucking license.

Back in 2007, the FBI arrested Amir Meshal on suspicion of leaving a terror training camp in Somalia. But this month, Meshal was granted a license to drive semi-trucks after he passed his road test. He also applied for a school bus endorsement.

Meshal was asked to leave two different U.S. mosques due to suspected radicalization of other members.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (KMSP) – A Minnesota man, who Homeland Security identifies as a terror suspect who is on the “No Fly” list, now has his Class A commercial license, which will allow him to drive semi-trucks.

The FOX 9 Investigators revealed last May that Amir Meshal was attempting to get his Class A license from a Twin Cities truck driving school. The $4,000 tuition was paid for through the state workforce program.   The Minnesota Department of Public Safety confirms he was granted the license after passing a road test on August 8. A spokesperson said Meshal has also applied for a school bus endorsement, pending the outcome of a criminal background check.

In May 2014, Meshal was removed and trespassed from a Bloomington, Minn. mosque, Al Farooq, after he was suspected of radicalizing young people who would later travel to Syria. According to the police report, religious leaders said, “We have concerns about Meshal interacting with our youth.”  Meshal had previously been asked to leave an Eden Prairie, Minn. mosque for similar reasons.

The ACLU recently sued TSA and Homeland Security to have Meshal removed from the “No Fly” list.  But Homeland Security responded in a letter obtained by the FOX 9 Investigators that Meshal, “..may be a threat to civil aviation or national security,” adding that, “It has been determined that you (Amir Meshal) are an individual who represents a threat of engaging in or conducting a violent act of terrorism and who is operationally capable of doing so.”

In 2007, Meshal, a U.S. citizen of Egyptian descent, was arrested in Kenya by the FBI, suspected of leaving a terror training camp in Somalia. Meshal, via the ACLU, is also suing the U.S. government for detaining him overseas for three months. In the lawsuit, Meshal claims the FBI tried to convince him to become an informant — an offer he says he declined.

The FOX 9 Investigators asked the Minnesota Department of Public Safety why they issued a Class A license for someone who Homeland Security believes has the “operational capacity” to carry out a terror attack. We have not heard back.

Statement from Hina Shamsi, ACLU attorney representing Amir Meshal

“Mr. Meshal has never been charged with a crime and has sued the government to obtain a fair process to challenge his wrongful inclusion on the No Fly List.  Like many other unemployed Americans, he’s trying to obtain credentials for a job so he can build a life for his family, including a baby.  Any suggestion that Mr. Meshal’s efforts to get a job somehow present a concern is shameful. On Mr. Meshal’s cases: his unlawful rendition and detention case is on appeal. The latest in the No Fly List case is described here.

In 2014, there was a deeper FBI investigation.

A Minnesota youth center is at the heart of a federal grand jury investigation into a suspected ISIS terrorist pipeline.

The FBI says that someone on the ground in Minnesota is convincing young people to join the terror fight in Syria, then giving them money to get there.

Up to 30 Somali-Americans who have reportedly joined or tried to join terrorist groups overseas had attended Al Farooq Youth and Family Center in Minnesota. That’s the same mosque that kicked out 31-year-old Amir Meshal this summer for allegedly proselytizing radical Islam ideologies.

 

 

Obama’s Retreat from Global Stage, Refugee Crisis

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 Germany

VIENNA (AP) — As regional leaders met Thursday to tackle Europe’s refugee crisis, a gruesome discovery unfolded a short drive from the Austrian capital: An abandoned truck was found with at least 20 — and possibly up to 50 — decomposing bodies of migrants piled inside.

It was the latest tragedy in a year that has seen tens of thousands of people risking all to seek a better life or refuge in wealthy European countries. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the Vienna conference she was “shaken by the awful news,” and summit participants held a minute of silence.  More here.

From the United Nations Critical Intelligence Division:

27 August 2015 – Clashes between rival militias in the past few days have forced several thousand people to flee their homes in the Central African Republic (CAR) town of Bambari and seek shelter at a former cotton factory inside the compound of the United Nations peacekeeping mission, the UN refugee agency said today.

“We are extremely concerned by the mounting violence in Bambari and its impact on the civilian population. Our staff have reported the displacement of people who are extremely frightened,” Kouassi Lazare Etien, the Representative of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in CAR, said in a press release.

Mr. Etien said that the agency was also worried about hundreds of Sudanese refugees “trapped in a refugee camp [near Bambari] and at high risk of attacks.” The road leading to the camp had been inaccessible since the weekend, but a UNHCR team escorted by UN peacekeepers reached the Sudanese refugee camp on Wednesday.

“Fresh fighting between rival militia forces erupted on August 20 and triggered new waves of displacement,” the refugee agency reported.

“A spontaneous IDP [internally displaced persons] site had sprung up inside the Bambari compound of the UN peace-keeping force,” the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in CAR (MINUSCA), according to the refugee agency.

UNHCR staff said the agency’s partner, the National Refugee Commission, had registered about 3,000 displaced persons in the MINUSCA compound as of Tuesday.

“But conditions are dire at the site, a former cotton factory with no sanitation facilities and limited access to water and shelter,” the agency said.

The situation began to ease on Thursday but UNHCR staff say Bambari remains very tense and they fear the situation could deteriorate again.

UNHCR is now able to move around Bambari and is trying to assess the total number of newly displaced. The tension remains with armed groups in control of the streets.

The population and aid workers were isolated and inaccessible, but a humanitarian corridor has been opened to the airport since Tuesday following negotiations between MINUSCA and the rival militia groups.

The latest flare-up in Bambari erupted after a 19-year-old Muslim was killed in the city and beheaded by alleged anti-Balaka fighters, according to the refugee agency. “This triggered violent reprisal attacks between the two communities in Bambari, which have left at least 10 people dead and many injured, including ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) staff,” it said.

The failure of the United Nations Human Rights and the U.S. State Department dismissing crisis conditions

Reuters: Austrian police suspect that a Bulgarian-Hungarian trafficking ring was behind the deaths of 71 migrants found in a truck on an Austrian highway, Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief for the province of Burgenland, told a news conference.

In our own hemisphere, Latin America, terror reigns

FP: Over the past week, an unprecedented crackdown has been underway in the Venezuelan state of Tachira, where a mass expulsion of unnaturalized Colombians has been undertaken by Venezuelan authorities with uncharacteristic efficiency — if with a tragically characteristic lack of due process. To date, nearly 1,100 individuals — including small children and the elderly — have been summarily deported across the two countries’ shared border: their possessions denied to them, their homes bulldozed to the ground to prevent them from returning. To avoid losing everything, many more Colombians have attempted to salvage what they could of their belongings and cross over on foot, fording the narrow river dividing what, in Simón Bolívar’s day, had been a single, united country.

Families have been separated, businesses abandoned, and communities shattered.

Families have been separated, businesses abandoned, and communities shattered. The sheer number of dispossessed has all but overwhelmed the capacity of local Colombian authorities. In nearby Cúcuta, a Boston-sized city just across the border, refugees are now being housed in tents grouped into makeshift camps – their broken livelihoods mere collateral damage for Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s latest manufactured crisis.

The area where Venezuelan Tachira’s border meets the Colombian state of North Santander is a bit of an oddity for South America. While Spanish and Portuguese colonial boundaries were usually set along major natural obstacles such as the Andes, major tributaries of the Amazon, or impassable jungles, the Tachira River runs only around a meter deep and can be crossed easily at multiple points. For locals in Cúcuta, cut off from the rest of Colombia to the west by the imposing Cordillera Oriental mountain range, this has long rendered Venezuela more accessible than Colombia itself. Tachira, too, has long been a distinct cultural entity from the rest of Venezuela: a no-man’s-land that once birthed most of the country’s military Caudillo strongmen, and now breeds its most adamant anti-government uprisings. Given the porous national border and the many price distortions caused by Venezuela’s arcane multi-tier exchange rate and heavily subsidized staples, a vibrant illicit trade has flourished among the region’s entrepreneurial population, including gasoline smuggling and food arbitrage. Even in faraway Caracas, the street value of black market dollars is referred to as the “Cúcuta price.” More here.

Syrian refugees major plight

Amman (AFP) – After escaping a devastating war, frustrated Syrian refugees in aid-starved neighbouring states say they must now choose between joining an exodus to Europe or “returning home to die”.  

Millions of Syrians have found shelter in surrounding countries including Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan that are now struggling to cope with the massive influx.

A lack of jobs and humanitarian assistance means that many are now giving up on their host nations.

“What do they expect us to do, to die in silence?” said Mohammed al-Hariri, who lives in Jordan’s vast Zaatari desert refugee camp.

“Syrians now have two choices: either to return and die in their country or to emigrate,” he said.

Around 340,000 migrants reached the EU’s borders in the seven months to July, in the continent’s biggest migration crisis since World War II, with hundreds perishing at sea.

Most are escaping the more than four-year-old conflict in Syria that has claimed over 240,000 lives, and more are expected to follow.

“From the Syrians we have interviewed this year it is clear that many are contemplating making a dangerous journey to try to reach Europe through North Africa or Turkey,” said Adam Coogle, a Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“Many said they feel that a lack of humanitarian assistance plus an inability to legally work in surrounding countries forces them to choose between a return to the conflict zone in Syria or to attempt a dangerous journey to Europe.”

– ‘Losing hope’ –

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR estimates that more than four million Syrians have fled the bloodshed which broke out in March 2011, mostly to neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey but also Egypt and Iraq. More here.

 

Innovative Words Don’t Change the Global Refugee Crisis

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The battle over the words used to describe migrants

BBC: The word migrant is defined in Oxford English Dictionary as “one who moves, either temporarily or permanently, from one place, area, or country of residence to another”.

It is used as a neutral term by many media organisations – including the BBC – but there has been criticism of that use.

News website al-Jazeera has decided it will not use migrant and “will instead, where appropriate, say refugee“. An online editor for the network wrote: “It has evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative.” A Washington Post piece asked if it was time to ditch the word.

There are some who dislike the term because it implies something voluntary but that it is applied to people fleeing danger. A UN document suggests: “The term ‘migrant’… should be understood as covering all cases where the decision to migrate is taken freely by the individual concerned, for reasons of ‘personal convenience’ and without intervention of an external compelling factor.”

“Migrant used to have quite a neutral connotation,” explains Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. “It says nothing about their entitlement to cross that border or whether they should be.” But some people believe that the word has recently developed a sour note. It is being used to mean “not a refugee”, argues Betts.

Online searches for migrant are at their highest since Google started collating this information in 2004. And in the past month (to 25 August using the Nexis database), the most commonly used term in UK national newspapers (excluding the Times, the Sun and the Financial Times) was migrant – with 2,541 instances. This was twice as popular as the next most frequently used word, refugee.

A refugee, according to the 1951 Refugee Convention, “is any person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country”.

“Refugee implies that we have an obligation to people,” says Betts. “It implies that we have to let them on to our territory and give them the chance to seek asylum.”

But there would be many people who would be wary of labelling someone a refugee until that person has gone through the legal process of claiming asylum. In the UK, and other places, claims for “refugee status” are examined before being either granted or denied.

“The moment at which they can officially say whether they are refugees or economic migrants is the moment at which the EU state that is processing their claim makes its decision,” says Tim Stanley, historian and columnist for the Daily Telegraph. “I am not questioning the validity of their narrative, I am not saying that anyone was lying about it. I am saying that it is down to the state in which they have arrived to define what they are.”

Asylum seeker refers to someone who has applied for refugee status and is waiting to hear the result of their claim. But it is also often used about those trying to get to a particular country to make a claim. The word asylum is very old indeed having first been used in 1430 to refer to “a sanctuary or inviolable place of refuge and protection for criminals and debtors, from which they cannot be forcibly removed without sacrilege”.

The most common descriptor for asylum seeker in UK newspaper articles between 2010 to 2012 was the word failed.

But while the term failed asylum seeker describes someone who has gone through a well-defined process, there are less specifically applied terms.

One of the more controversial ones is illegal immigrant, along with illegal migrant.

A study by the Migration Observatory at Oxford University analysed 58,000 UK newspaper articles and found that illegal was the most common descriptor for the word immigrants.

“The term is dangerous,” argues Don Flynn, director of Migrants Rights Network. “It’s better to say irregular or undocumented migrants.” Calling someone an illegal immigrant associates them with criminal behaviour, he adds.

Other critics of the phrase say that it gives the impression that it’s the person that is illegal rather than their actions. “Once you’ve entered the UK and claimed asylum, you are not illegal. Even if your asylum claim is refused, you still can’t be an illegal migrant,” says Zoe Grumbridge from Refugee Action.

The UN and the EU parliament have called for an end to the phrase. Some people have also criticised the use of clandestine. In 2013, the Associated Press news agency and the Los Angeles Times both changed their style guides and recommended against using the phrase “illegal immigrant” to describe someone without a valid visa.

But others disagree, saying that the phrase can be a useful description. “If you are coming into a country without permission and you do it outside the law, that is illegal,” says Alp Mehmet, vice chairman of MigrationWatch UK. “If they haven’t entered yet, they are not illegal immigrants, although potentially they are migrating using illegal means.”

Clearly there are those who want to make a distinction between people using the accepted legal channel to enter a country and those who are entering by other methods.

“I understand why people are uncomfortable with that term but it is accurate when you are talking about someone who has broken the law to enter the country or who has been told to leave the country and is breaking the law by staying,” says Stanley.

Another criticism of the term immigrant, with or without the word illegal added on to it, is that it is less likely to be used to describe people from Western countries. Some commentators have suggested that Europeans tend to be referred to as expats.

“Very often when we talk about British people who migrate,” says Emma Briant, author of the book Bad News for Refugees, “we tend to talk of them as expats or expatriates. They are not immigrants.” There has been some satirical commentary about the differences between the terms.

But the shift towards the neutral blanket term migrant has been pronounced. To again use UK national newspapers as a measurement, 15 years ago, in the month to 25 August, the terms refugee, asylum seeker and illegal immigrant were all used more often than migrants.

And many disagree that migrant is in any way offensive. “It’s a proper description for anyone who has moved across a border,” says Don Flynn from the Migrants Rights Network.

Judith Vonberg, a freelance journalist who has written for the Migrants’ Rights Network about the issue, goes further. She says that ditching the word could “actually reinforce the dichotomy that we’ve got between the idea of the good refugee and the bad migrant”.

Alp Mehmet, from Migration Watch, also believes that migrant should be used but because it is an easy word to understand. “Everyone… knows exactly what we mean by migrants.”

Some people also believe that migrant is an appropriate phrase to use when a group of people could include both refugees and economic migrants. Tim Stanley argues that it does accurately reflect a significant number of people who are making the crossing into Europe. “It is why the UNHCR is absolutely right to describe that group of people as both migrants and refugees,” he says.

The use of the term economic migrant has been much debated. Home Secretary Theresa May used it in May to describe migration into Europe. She said that there were large numbers of people coming from countries such as Nigeria and Somalia who were “economic migrants who’ve paid criminal gangs to take them across the Mediterranean”.

The term economic migrant is “being used to imply choice rather than coercion”, says Betts. “It’s used to imply that it’s voluntary reasons for movement rather than forced movement.”

Some words have fallen almost completely out of favour. Alien was used regularly in the UK press before World War Two, says Panikos Panayi, professor of European history at De Montfort University. “The first major immigration act [in the UK] was called the Aliens Act 1905,” he says.

But in the US, alien remains official terminology for any person who is not a citizen or national.

The Obama administration proposed Dreamers as a new positive way – with its reference to the American Dream – of describing undocumented young people who met the conditions of the Dream act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors).

There is another word with positive connotations that is not used much anymore. “Exile has gone out of credit,” says Betts, since the end of the Cold War. “It had a slightly sort of dignified and noble connotation,” he argues.

It was used to describe someone who had been forced out of their country but was still politically engaged with it and was planning on going back one day. “I think that today, many Syrians are in that position,” says Betts.

The shifting language of migration might seem petty to some but to those involved in the debate there is no doubt of its importance. “Words matter in the migration debate,” says Rob McNeil from the Migration Observatory.