Money spent on wars must be spent on refugees: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Ian Rintoul, with the Refugee Action Coalition, to discuss the recent remarks by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi criticizing the international community for its negligence toward the condition of Afghan refugees.

A rough transcription of the interview follows.

Press TV: Why do you feel these displaced Afghans have been forgotten or neglected by the international community for the most part?

Rintoul: Well, I think the international community is far too focused on the military activities in Afghanistan and the victims of all those military activities [that] the people who have been forced to flee as a result of the intervention in Afghanistan are considered to be by large collateral damage. So, they have been forgotten by the West by large.

Press TV: How much would you say that the US-led war in Afghanistan is to blame for the large number of displaced Afghans we see today?

Rintoul: I don’t think there’s really much other explanation. It has been overwhelmingly that Western intervention, which has driven people out, of course there is Taliban itself initially which resulted in that war but the intervention of the West has been the thing which is driven people out of Afghanistan into Pakistan, large numbers into Iran, we see Afghans being a large proportion of the people even attempting to come to Australia to seek protection.

Press TV: Shouldn’t there be an equation somewhere down the line where if particular countries cause refugees from other countries because of their military intervention, they should be held more accountable and have to support those refugees more so than other countries?

Rintoul: Well, you would like to think so. I mean if morality was as important to international law as military power, then we would see that kind of equitable theme. There is a particular responsibility for the countries who do intervene militarily in Afghanistan and in the Middle East to take responsibility for the refugees who are created by those military conflicts and by that political persecution.

But we see billions of dollars spent on military activities while there’s meager amounts and sometimes nothing given to the countries and to the refugee agencies that are trying to provide the help that is urgently needed.

So, we do need to turn that equation around. If all the money spent on refugees is spent on military activity, the world would be a very different place.

Press TV: The UN praised Iran for the large number of Afghan refugees that it’s hosted with very limited financial help from the international community. Why do you think that Iran has received such restricted or limited financial help in its endeavor to help Afghan refugees?

Rintoul: I think Iran is being regarded as part of “the axis of evil” in terms of the old US presidential kind of decrees. It has been the victim of sanctions from the West and but it’s also the case as in so many other instances. The poor countries that immediately provide that assistance, you can think of Iran, you can think of Lebanon, of Jordan… people have taken the bulk of the Syrian refugees, Turkey even in some respects.

But they have not got and they have not received the international aid that they need in anything like the comparison for the support that they have given to the refugees. I think Iran, like the other countries, has been a victim of Western foreign policy.

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