Shedding a light on the positions and stances taken by opposition and revolutionary factions towards the refugee policies of neighbouring nations

Introduction:

Given Assad’s regime’s decision to deal with popular peaceful protests using the militaristic and security apparatus, most Syrian regions witnessed waves of migration and asylum seeking to nearby countries throughout the years of the revolution. Most of them settling in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, as well as thousands of Syrians fleeing to other Arab or western nations. As a result of the increasing numbers of refugees -especially in neighbouring countries- and the economic, political and security implications it carries with it; the refugee issue started taking a bigger portion of the political space of neighbouring countries as well as being one of the main issues in political discourse.

And in 2022, this topic has resurfaced once again stealing the spotlight due to several changes and actions undergone by various nations with differing motivations.

For example, the UK has announced its intention to transfer asylum seekers -Syrians among them- to Rwanda to process their applications while they stay there. Before that, Denmark sent Syrian refuges to deportation facilities, preparing to send them back to Syria with the excuse of “safe” regions existing (Damascus), which led to hundreds of refugees fleeing Denmark seeking asylum yet again.

In the same context, more conservative policies towards refugees have been implemented in neighbouring nations hosting large numbers of refugees (Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan). Many factors have contributed to this shift, mainly the length of the asylum period as well as the harsh economic conditions these countries are going through. As well as a host of other factors pushing the host countries to either partially or fully change their policies towards refugees and imposing some restrictions on them varying between the host countries.

The importance the refugee issue has in the eyes of opposition and to revolutionary factions, as well as its importance to Syrians in general, should be reflected in the way these factions interact with the issues the refugees face.

The following questions were proposed in light of what was discussed earlier: Do the positions taken by revolutionary forces towards refugee policies differ from one country to another? What are the factors that are expected to affect the positions? Is there any common ground between the factions with regards to their positions towards refugee policies implemented by various nations?

Paper’s methodology:

Thematic frame: The revolutionary and opposition factions analysed are a sample of “traditional political, emerging, and militaristic” factions. The data studied was officially published by these factions and was analysed to confirm or deny previous theories or assumptions. That was done using the 6 numbers from National Consensus Index covering the period between 2018 and 2022.

Time frame: Data published by the various factions between the years 2018 and 2022

This paper adopts two methods of analysis, firstly analysing the messages and signals given by the factions, it was deemed a suitable way to deal with data released by the factions studied in this paper. The other method was thematic analysis, to assess agreement and points of difference in the positions adopted by the factions towards policies affecting Syrian refugees.

The paper includes 4 main sections; the first discusses how silence was the main position adopted by most revolutionary and opposition factions towards the policies concerning refugees in neighbouring countries. In the second section we discuss the type of factions involved explicitly in this file, the third section delves into the messages sent by the various factions through their statements, and finally discussing the points of difference in these messages in the fourth section.

To read the complete paper (Arabic)