SoS, John Kerry had a meeting with Hammond, the UK Foreign Minister. Among many topics, Syria was discussed:
Hammond: We have, of course, talked primarily this morning about the situation in Syria and the migration crisis that is affecting Europe, and we’ve talked about how to move forward with our partners in response to recent developments in Syria to tackle the growing threat from ISIL and to ensure that we’re joined up between our actions in Iraq and our actions in Syria.
Kerry:
With respect to Syria, obviously, we spent a significant amount of time and we covered a lot of territory today. As the foreign secretary said, we talked about Yemen, where we urged the parties to get to negotiations. We talked about Libya, where hope that the work of Bernardino Leon will bear fruit. But obviously, there are challenges, and we call on the house of representatives to return to that process and to recognize this is a critical moment. And ISIL and other extremist groups take advantage of a vacuum, and a vacuum is what is left if there is not an agreement. So we need for the sake of the 6 million citizens of Libya, where there is great opportunity and significant wealth available to be able to help that country bind its wounds and move forward. We hope that they will make the right choices in the days ahead.
With respect to Syria, the foreign secretary and I agreed completely on the urgency of nations coming together in order to resolve this war that has gone on for much too long. And it is clear that the challenge to continental Europe, but to everybody, of the migrant population of refugees seeking a better life cannot be properly addressed just by addressing the numbers of refugees coming into a country or providing more support to them; it has to be addressed by dealing with the root cause, which is the violence in Syria and the lack of hope and possibility of a future that so many people in that region feel as a consequence of the violence that’s taking place.
The full meeting readout is here.
*** Deeper facts:
In part: DailyMail, includes photo essay
Four out of five migrants are NOT from Syria: EU figures expose the ‘lie’ that the majority of refugees are fleeing war zone
- Some 44,000 of the 213,000 refugees who arrived in Europe were from Syria
- A further 27,000 new arrivals on the continent came from Afghanistan
- Britain received one in 30 of all the asylum claims made by new applicants
- David Cameron has offered to take in 20,000 refugees but none from the EU
Only one in every five migrants claiming asylum in Europe is from Syria.
The EU logged 213,000 arrivals in April, May and June but only 44,000 of them were fleeing the Syrian civil war.
Campaigners and left-wing MPs have suggested the vast majority of migrants are from the war-torn state, accusing the Government of doing too little to help them.
‘This exposes the lie peddled in some quarters that vast numbers of those reaching Europe are from Syria,’ said David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth. ‘Most people who are escaping the war will go to camps in Lebanon or Jordan.
‘Many of those who have opted to risk their lives to come to Europe have done so for economic reasons.’
The figures from Eurostat, the EU’s official statistical agency, show that migration from April to June was running at double the level of the same period in 2014.
The number of Afghans lodging asylum claims is up four-fold, from 6,300 to 27,000. Another 17,700 claims were made by Albanians, whose country is at peace.
A further 13,900 applicants came from Iraq which, like Syria, is being torn apart by the Islamic State terror group.
Sample individual stories: From Voice of America
One is a sixth-grader who braved walks through Balkan forests to join his brother in England; another fought the Taliban while serving Afghan forces in Helmand; a third spent years working in Turkey to cover a human smuggler’s fee.
They are Afghanistan’s latest diaspora, refugees of raging war and shrunken economic prospects, swept up in the largest flood of migrants Europe has seen in more than 70 years.
Until their numbers were eclipsed by refugees from the Syrian war last year, Afghanistan had produced more refugees than any other nation thanks to more than three decades of intractable conflict.
While the majority of prior Afghan refugees made new lives in Pakistan and Iran, United Nations data say nearly 80,000 Afghans are now officially seeking asylum in Europe — the highest rate in 20 years.
Their exodus has only increased as a resurgent Taliban wages its bloodiest offensive in 14 years.
Drawn by the promise of a better life, many tapped into their life’s savings and money from family already in Europe to pay smugglers to spirit them across six countries. The less well-off risked the journey alone.
VOA Afghan Service anchor Ahmad Fawad Lami traveled to Hungary and Serbia where he caught up with many Afghan refugees just as Austria briefly opened its border.
These are just a few of their stories. A must read.
