The United States has been at war in the Middle East for 14 years. Wars have consequences. They lead to people willing to leave their homeland because they see no better option for the future.
Dienst: No. Again, most of that was over by the time I got to Lesbos. There was the famous picture of the three-year-old Syrian boy washed up dead on the beach of another island, Kos. And there were many mass casualties—drownings of dozens of people all at once. Greek lifeguard rescue boats, coast guard boats, EU coast guard boats, and so on were there to try to mitigate that, as well as healthcare providers on the beach caring for people immediately on arrival. Plus, there were people doing laundry so that refugees could have dry clothes to change into; volunteers trying to feed them; and others trying to process their paperwork so that they could move about legally. It was really an enormous undertaking by many people and organizations.
However, once the borders were blocked off to the north, people started to amass in the Port of Piraeus near Athens and at the borders in Northern Greece. So we relocated to assist in the second phase of the crisis, which involved different kinds of challenges. It was March, pouring down rain, cold, with temperatures just above freezing. People were living in inadequate tents, soaked through, shivering in the rain, building bonfires to burn whatever they could find to keep warm. Often that was plastic, producing toxic fumes. We started treating a lot of upper respiratory infections made worse by chronic smoke inhalation. Crowded conditions and many children meant that we were also treating burns and various other forms of trauma. Plus, you had all the illnesses and conditions that any community of thousands of people would experience—from childbirth to heart attacks to accidents—all aggravated by cold, crowded conditions, less than optimal sanitation, nutrition, and so on.
Then, as the temperatures warmed, we had other challenges. Insect infestations—lice, scabies—followed by sun exposure, dehydration, plus all the usual primary care issues. It was difficult to handle severe cases—strokes, heart attacks, difficult childbirths—because the nearest hospital was 25 miles away and the ambulance service in this part of Greece was overtaxed by this deluge of people. There were also language issues. Arabic was the main language, because most of the people were from Syria. But there were also people speaking Kurdish, Urdu, Dari, and Pashto, so we had to develop ways of translating these various languages to deal with all these cultural groups—from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. We relied heavily on international humanitarian volunteers who were capable of translating into English and we often utilized refugees themselves if they could speak English, German or Spanish.
This is what happens when you have a policy of endless war. The United States has been at war in the Middle East for 14 years. Wars have consequences. They lead to people willing to leave their homeland because they see no better option for the future. All these regime changes have been disasters. We now have failed states in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya…and our attempt at regime change in Syria is a stalemate because the regime is backed by the Russians and the Iranians.
All of these wars have ended up “lose-lose.” I mean, who’d have thought that Iraq would end up worse off than when Saddam Hussein was in power? But in many ways it is because now the country has no infrastructure, no social safety net, and no functioning government.
We need to find different ways to deal with international problems instead of defaulting to our military hammer—which of course reacts as if every problem is a nail. As a result, we’re displacing thousands, if not millions, of innocent people who are just trying to survive and create normal lives for their children.
The stories we’ve heard from these people are horrific. Many times they’ve seen their family members massacred; they’ve been tortured—both by the Assad regime and by ISIS. There’s a chapter in our book that tells the story of “Vincent,” a young man who served as one of our translators, who has been tortured by both the Assad regime and ISIS. That’s why he’s a refugee; he doesn’t want to take either side; he just wants a life.
The MOON: Since it’s a fact that we have killed, tortured, and destroyed people’s lives, is there some justification to the fear that these refugees now hate us and would want to retaliate against us if we granted them asylum?
Dienst: All actions have consequences. That’s one of the things I find so troubling about the American mentality: we think we can act with impunity. Our mainstream media do not seem very sensitive to the physical consequences of our military actions. They show us footage of the missiles being launched. They show us the “shock and awe,” but they don’t show the physical consequences on the ground; the terror we inflict on human populations.
In modern warfare, about 90% of the casualties are civilians—which is a war crime in itself. The Geneva Conventions prohibit the targeting of civilian populations. Yet we seem very indifferent to all that. But of course it creates enemies. How would we feel if our country was bombed, or a foreign power tried to institute “regime change” on us? Violence begets violence. Calling people terrorists is a very loaded term and seems to apply only to combatants who don’t use conventional weapons. But if it applies to anyone who has caused others to feel terror, it certainly applies to the United States.
Nevertheless, refugees are fleeing terrorism; they’re not terrorists. And the United States already has an extreme vetting process for screening them before admitting them to this country. It’s a process that takes years.
The MOON: What is happening with the refugees stranded in northern Greece after Macedonia closed its border?
Dienst: The Greek authorities tried to transport some of the refugees back to Athens, but people were reluctant to go because they thought it meant giving up hope of ever making it into northern Europe. What eventually transpired is that the Greek government transported refugees to military camps and housed them there. The advantage was a little more control of the environment: there was shelter; people were out of the mud and rain. That’s where most of the refugees are now; the other refugee camps have been destroyed.
I left in May 2016, so I can’t give firsthand updates, but there is a process for asylum and some people are slowly making it through that process and moving to new home countries around the world. Other refugees are being moved to apartments in Greece, which most consider a step up from life in the military camps. And others still linger in the military camps. And, unfortunately, more refugees continue to come ashore because the military pressure to prevent them is hard to sustain over time. As long as the situation in Syria and other countries is unresolved, the pressure to flee will be overwhelming.
And we’re just talking about the situation in Greece. Turkey has probably shouldered an even greater burden from refugees. Plus, there are all the refugees streaming out of northern Africa, as well. The UN has said this is the greatest refugee crisis to affect Europe since the end of World War II.
The MOON: The people fleeing northern Africa are coming from…?
Dienst: Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen, Libya—another failed state that we created. Whatever you might have thought about Qaddafi, the country had infrastructure and social services—indeed quite generous social services—that now have been destroyed.
How many refugees can Europe absorb? Germany has taken in about a million. Here in the United States, we’ve taken in only about 10,000—and we have a much larger capacity than Germany does. And a much larger responsibility for creating the situations that refugees are fleeing.
The MOON: What do you think will be necessary to get the United States to shoulder a greater share of the load?
Dienst: For every action, there’s a reaction. Certainly the election of Donald Trump was an action in the wrong direction. The good news is that it’s sparked a lot of counter-reaction and protest challenging the Constitutionality of banning people from certain countries based on religion. I do think we need to be more generous in our refugee acceptance policy—particularly by virtue of the fact that our government created a lot of the situations that refugees are fleeing. The principle of compassion symbolized by the Statue of Liberty—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”—that’s what we say we stand for, but we’ve really turned our back on that philosophy as a policy matter. And then, of course, we have to get serious about diplomacy as a solution to international issues and disagreements, rather than using the military as our first response—because it really only makes matters worse. The fact is that many—if not most—refugees would like to return to their home countries, if there was peace and stability and a chance for a meaningful life. Trying to create that reality should be our goal.
I want to emphasize that I’m not against the military at all; but it should be used as a last resort, when all other means have failed. Instead, since the early 2000s, if not earlier, war has been our first resort, and has produced disaster after disaster, making each situation much more difficult to resolve than it would have been initially. We need to rethink that. And by the way, I’m not saying that either the Democrat or Republican parties have had the right approach. They both rely on fear rather than reason to move public opinion.
The MOON: You are a family and emergency medical practitioner in in rural America, which is generally regarded as conservative country. How have your neighbors responded to your propensity to help refugees—which many seem to fear as “terrorists”?
Dienst: Well, sure, it’d be easier for me to hang out in the university district of Seattle with people who think just like me, but that’s not really where the need is. When I was going to medical school the need was for primary care in rural areas, so that’s what I went into. It hasn’t been easy to live in the red part of a blue state, but again, I think it’s valuable to provide another perspective. I’ve been outspoken against the war in Iraq, I’ve had articles about Palestine published in conservative local newspapers, and it’s fair to say I’ve made some adversaries, which has perhaps made my life more difficult than it would have been otherwise, but…so what? My trips overseas have given me a greater context for framing the types and magnitude of adversities that human beings have to face; mine are pretty minor. And if my “propensities,” as you say, get me in too much short-term trouble, I can always go overseas again. [Laughs] This work has certainly made my life more interesting.
The MOON: What can you say to reassure people who might be more fearful about refugees? What has been an effective approach to talking with your neighbors?
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