There is no doubt that facing the spread of terrorism in the Arab and Muslim world requires confrontations and plans on multiple time ranges and in different geographical areas, and also requires the need to take into account the secondary factors feeding the phenomenon of terrorism, for fear that these efforts go in vain if the role and impact of these factors in supplying terrorist organizations with the elements that ensure their viability and continuity, are ignored.
Among these feeding factors is the vast number of refugees in various parts of the Arab world. Although the number of refugees worldwide has reached nearly 50 million refugees, according to the statistics of specialized international institutions, it is striking that most of them are from Arab and Islamic countries, and the most unusual is that Syrian refugees have become on top of the list of global refugees, with a number of about four million refugees scattered in several countries, particularly in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and the Gulf states and other countries in the world.
When nearly four million Syrian refugees suffer the worst conditions of life, it seems that the issue needs an intense regional and international interest not only to provide a decent life for this huge number of people, but because the evidence confirms that the stability element will remain absent from the majority of those among them who will continue to live in the shelters on the Syrian border with neighboring countries, perhaps for a period of no less than at least a year from now.
Harsh living conditions experienced by the residents of the shelters can represent an incubator environment for any extremist or militant ideology, especially in light of the declining interest in the suffering of these people and the fact of turning them into a deferred number among the priorities of the international community, and in the light of the stillness, which has become a headline to issues that are about turning into chronic crises such as the Syrian crisis and other similar crises.
No one can affirm the possibility of immunizing the youth and adolescents who dwell in shelters against joining terrorist organizations, which find in these youth a vital tributary with manpower that they need to continue the violence and the bloodshed, and they exploit the anger and hatred that may ripple in the hearts of the majority of these young people in order to recruit them and attract them to join terrorist organizations.
And perhaps the matter can get even more dangerous in the case of the availability of funds to the terrorist organizations in order to seek to entice a slice of refugees to join the ranks of the organization. And everyone understands that Daesh is betting heavily on having the money that is used to lure a large number of young people as a result of the selling of oil on the sly by the organization to smugglers from oil wells and refineries that are under its control, as well as the income of the organization from the revenues of the operations of kidnapping and looting carried out by its elements against the population of the regions and cities it controls.
What I would say is not an indictment of the inhabitants of the shelters and it is of course not an attempt for trying to push for restricting them at the security level, the tough life conditions they suffer from are enough. Also it is necessary to understand the fact that the problem is not these refugees, but lies in their cruel life conditions, so, attention should be paid to the circumstances of life which could push some of them to go through rough terrains to bring money or to join terrorist organizations or work for them in any way as a way to provide a living for their families. Of course, no one wants to see this bad scenario occurring, but also we should not remain silent about the suffering of these people or ignore their suffering or postpone it among the priorities of specialized countries and institutions regionally and internationally.
In parallel with the search for solutions to the Syrian crisis at the military and political levels, the Syrian refugees issue should occupy the forefront on the agenda of regional and international discussions, so as hundreds of thousands of Syrian young people, adolescents and children feel that their brothers support them and that the efforts to fight extremism and terrorism and to eradicate the organization of “Daesh” are also directed to support them and lift them out of their desperate situation and seek to ensure their return as soon as possible to their normal lives in their cities and homes.
Any effort to improve the living conditions of Syrian refugees or the Iraqis or the Palestinians or other refugees is an effort to immunize the minds against the terrorist ideology, and to make terrorist organizations miss the opportunity that they seek to convert these shelters into hatcheries for terrorists.
