The Oases Program

“The cash-strapped World Food Program has had to drop one-third of Syrian refugees from its food voucher program in Middle Eastern host countries this year, including 229,000 in Jordan who stopped receiving food aid in September,”  a U.N. spokeswoman reported recently. This cash shortage has been evident all year causing a good portion of the migration to Europe.  Today’s headline is that Germany orders curbs at the border to manage the receipt of a  million refugees.  Its an impossible situation with a conundrum between the humanitarian need to accommodate those fleeing government dysfunction and the danger of domestic reaction to the influx of so many strangers in homogeneous societies.  Scandinavian countries considered models of generosity and civility are so small and the numbers of refugees choosing to go there so large that an alternative has to be found or it will end badly.  Badly as the July 2011 slaughter at a Norwegian Youth Camp by a deranged right wing extremist deploring  Norway’s acceptance of outsiders.  Denmark is already showing its counter reaction. Germany’s  huge influx of immigrants has a simmering nativist reaction that is sure to come to an ugly boil.  For self preservation this hand wringing has got to stop and the humanitarian alternative found that doesn’t leave dead refugees on the beach.  The alternative is to create oases of sanity in the regions of political dysfunction, starting with Syria.

Norway has a giant oil trust funding a tiny population’s future.  They should divert some of those oil receipts to overfund the U. N.’s World Food Program immediately and make Jordan’s refugee camps an attractive destination for those fleeing from dysfunction.  I leave it to Norway for this quick salve to the problem while the EU spends to house and feed migrants already in Europe and the allies to develop and fund a long term oases making project.

Jordan as a country has enough on its hands domestically that the Syrian refugee camps are looked on with alarm.  Rather than have our Department of Defense work on it’s useless recruitment campaign for Syrian rebels without a political base, let it work on a project to create protected oases on the South Eastern border by moving the Jordanian refugee camps into Syria! The legalities of such of an endeavour are debatable, but so is the legality of the Assad regime.  Jordanian troops and allied air forces would protect these camps as they develop into city states which over time self govern and police themselves with nascent self developed political unions.  Ultimately a loyal militia would arise with which to expand West and North.  Oasis making requires a giant spigot of cash to the people.  The U.N.’s program in Jordan gives the refugee families debit cards with which it distributes cash to them so that they can buy the food and services they choose.  The oasis program would use a version of this system so that housing of the new city states is funded by the cash in the refugee’s hands and less so from bureaucrat cake eaters.

The oasis creation program would not get the full U. N. security council’s approval because of sovereignty issues as well Russia’s resistance in support of the current regime. The project has to be an allied effort.  Funding by the U.S. could come from eliminating and defunding a carrier task force whose air power in this region is proving to be counterproductive. Other oil rich states in the region with a preference to check writing versus taking in refugees should help fund the projects.  A benefit of free market prosperity engendered by the debit card system are bottoms up economies that pacify with entrepreneurship and trade.  If the southeastern program in Syria develops good momentum then the northeast region below Turkey could do the same with the Kurds.  Assad and his Alawite tribe could retreat to the sea North of Lebanon and thereby separate Syria into four distinct regions; a moderate Sunni south, Kurdish north, Alawite west and a radical Sunni center.  As each oasis prospers with self rule and allied protection the fractious center is contained and diminishes with expanding moderate city states of refugees returning from Europe.

A grand strategy to pacify the Middle East  requires a recognition that a sane society comes from political unions that deliver scarce resources for the greatest public good. Military might that is not followed up with a strong government that administers, polices and adjudicates effectively accomplishes nothing.  The cost of funding oases of sanity is minor in comparison to Europe’s expense to house, feed and assimilate migrants.  Over the long term these oases will develop political unions to serve its people effectively so they can fully take over their development and security and prove to be attractive to people longing to return to their homeland and thereby relieve the pressure on Europe.