The Canadian diplomat looked relieved. As he staggered out of the blistering Jordanian heat, my boss greeted him effusively. The two experts were meeting at our office in Amman, the Arab Center for Security Studies (ACSIS), to discuss recent security developments in the region, and they allowed me to partake in the meeting.
As the morning passed, our conversation turned to the brutal civil war in Syria, the defining conflict of the Levant. I asked the diplomat if the conservative backlash against Syrian refugees, a phenomenon plaguing the politics of Europe, was affecting the Canadian resettlement program.
“Canada’s resettlement program has been incredibly successful,” the Canadian diplomat boasted.
I was skeptical. I had researched refugee programs in the spring, and had found most of them sickeningly unresponsive. When I pressed him to explain his metric for success, the diplomat bristled:
“It’s based on how successfully the Syrians we accept assimilate into Canada.”
During my time as an intern at ACSIS, I realized that ‘success’ in security policy means different things to different people. Jordan, a veritable island of stability in the Levant, managed to avoid a series of garish terrorist attacks in 2015. Compared to its neighbors, Jordan’s security policy has been remarkably successful.
Yet, due to the conflict in these neighboring countries, Jordan bears an unimaginably heavy refugee burden. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that by December, Jordan will host 937,000 refugees from Syria. To put this into perspective: Syrian refugees constitute roughly 1 in 6 people in Jordan. An equivalent refugee demographic in the United States, as a percentage of the population, would be over 50 million people.
In response to the crisis, a U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee held a meeting in June called “Admitting Syrian Refugees: The Intelligence Void and the Emerging Homeland Security Threat.” Their fear was that without a strict vetting process, terrorists posing as refugees could infiltrate the United States.
As a result of this mentality, the United States has resettled less than 1,000 people. By December of last year, the ‘successful’ Canadian program had also assimilated a paltry 1,000 refugees. Instead of intervening in the humanitarian crisis, the West has chosen to lock out the survivors. Somehow, this is a ‘successful’ policy.
For over a decade, the West has defined terrorism as a security threat without addressing its root causes. Tightening border security to combat terrorism is like sandbagging a coastline to hold back rising sea levels. A lack of human development in the Middle East, whether due to conflict and refugee crises, energy poverty or poor education, makes people more susceptible to radicalization and demagoguery. No matter how we’d like to define our own security policies, they are directly linked with human security in the Middle East. We should adjust our definition of success accordingly.
Nowhere was this more clear to me than at the International Conference for Energy Security in the Middle East, hosted by ACSIS in June of 2015. The meeting was designed to bring energy and security experts together in one forum to discuss the energy landscape of the Middle East.
Many presenters spoke on nuclear energy. Nuclear is a contentious technology because it is dual-use, which means that it can be used for civilian or military purposes.
The presenters that spoke on nuclear energy could be classified into two ideological camps, based on which purpose they focused on. The hard-security wonks, primarily Americans and Europeans, focused on the threat of nuclear proliferation or dirty bombs — the military use. The soft-security wonks, predominantly Middle Eastern, focused on energy independence and diversification — the civilian use.
Unfortunately, these two groups tended to talk past each other. Whereas the Westerners warned that terrorists might steal and use fissile material in an attack, the Jordanians countered that energy poverty was a more tangible security threat. While Westerners were concerned about nuclear proliferation, Jordanians were concerned about power outages.
The ideological gulf was rooted in their differing conceptions of security. One speaker, looking for compromise, said that Jordan must address both concerns simultaneously, or “walk and chew gum.” The joke was lost on the audience.
It can be hard to communicate with Jordanians. The Middle East is an intricate web of cultural and political connections, and these relationships can be baffling for even the most experienced of diplomats.
When the South African Special Envoy for the Middle East visited our center, one representative reflected that, “The situation [in the Levant] is always changing. It’s so fluid. We could come back in a year and it could be totally different. It’s very hard for us to understand. ”
At universities in the United States, this fluidity is part of the reason it is so difficult to teach about ‘security’ in the Middle East. A good analysis assesses many complex phenomena simultaneously, such as tribalism, energy and water poverty and economic stagnation.
Unfortunately, these soft-security issues are often cut from the syllabi of professors more comfortable with elegant, ‘nation-state’ analyses. Or, there simply isn’t time to teach about human security. Either way, people falsely attribute terrorist ideologies to ‘hating our way of life’ or ‘being jealous of our freedom.’ This naive explanation shapes the national dialogue on the Middle East and bolsters conversations rooted in fear, like those of the aforementioned committee.
Even more than academia, our crude mischaracterization of the region stems from our unfamiliarity with the culture. How many Americans can name an Egyptian artist or identify the Iraqi flag? It is easier to point to a region on a map than it is to understand it.
Cultural exchange, however, requires a degree of economic openness and trade. This is one reason why the P5+1 Nuclear Deal with Iran, which will phase out economic sanctions in return for Iran abandoning its efforts to get the bomb, is potentially revolutionary.
In late July, I was lucky enough to attend a press conference on the deal held at the Iranian embassy. It was organized to allow Jordanians to express their thoughts on the accord.
As Khomeini and Khamenei looked down from their portraits hanging above the conference table, the semicircle of Arabs eviscerated the deal. The Jordanians were skeptical because it did not provide them with concrete (read, military) compensation. Many gestured to me suspiciously when they mentioned “Am-reek-a.”
The most concise defence of the accord came from the sole female delegate. When the microphone reached her, she said, “[The benefits] are in increased trade, increased cultural understanding and cooperation in business.” In other words, long-term socio-economic integration.
As the delegates shuffled out, many still opposed the deal.
Upon returning home from the embassy, I found that a man named Tariq had moved into our apartment. Tariq is from Yemen, like my roommate Khaled. In March of 2015, their country collapsed into brutal sectarian war. As the conflict spilled across Khaled’s hometown, a stream of his relatives and friends sought refuge in Jordan. One of his uncles received reconstructive surgery here after being shot in the jaw outside his home. Many blame the war on Iran.
At the Iranian embassy, it was easy to get lost in the semantics of debate. It was difficult to put a human face on proxy armies, nuclear capability or regional hegemony. In other words, it was easy to forget about the human costs of war and instability — until Tariq moved in next door.
Now, I have my doubts about the deal. Should the United States be shaking hands with leaders that sponsor this type of violence? I can’t answer that question.
However, I do know that a ‘successful’ security policy in the Middle East cannot be driven by fear. If we abandon people to violence and despair out of our hazy need for ‘national security,’ we become both less safe and less human.
Tariq and Khaled dream of peace. We ought not to forget that.
