After three weeks of media focus on migrants, it is all quiet. No austerity border controls have been implemented and life is back to normal.
Iron fist, no curtain
Well not really. Europe has received several hundred thousand migrants and refugees. Thousands are still waiting at the gates – and they are not all barbarians. The EU has shown its iron fist and forced its members to participate in their distribution. How that works out remains to be seen.
Most of the migrants want to go to Germany or Sweden.Desperate as they are, they are still choosing where to go, and the authorities are unable to do much about it.
This is no holiday
The Danish government hopes it will be able to ship many of the migrants onto the next destination. And it isn’t because the country isn’t able to cope with a substantial number in practical terms, but because the country is not ready
politically.
At last week’s Socialdemokraterne and Dansk Folkeparti congresses, it became clear that the leaders have realised they have to modify the rhetoric about rejection and turn to talk about temporary stay – even though there are no signs that the confl ict that caused all this upheaval will end anytime soon. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the migrants are here to stay longer than believed, if not permanently.
Stirrings at the UN
At a United Nations level, at least presidents Obama and Putin are talking. That is where the pragmatic formation of a solution should start and end – like 20 years before, when the former Yugoslavia broke up. Whether the map of the Middle East needs to be redrawn remains to be seen.
Mankind has once again proven that culture, language and religion are rooted deeply in their minds and hearts. First one has to create a sense of identity to make people feel safe, and only then, over time, can they reach out and cross the
barriers of the past.
Fingers crossed
We cross our fingers in the hope that the UN will soon be able to set an agenda for peace in the Middle East and Syria. But with more than 100,000 UN personnel engaged elsewhere regulating conflicts, it’s a tall order.
We had a Danish chairman of the UN Security Council during the Six Day War in 1967, and that worked out well in the end. And we now have a UN Assembly chairman. Will he succeed in bringing appeasement to places where it is much needed – such as Syria?