Why Aren’t the Gulf States Taking More Syrian Refugees?

Alarm over the Syrian refugee crisis prompts questions about why Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other wealthy Gulf states that share cultural characteristics do not do more to assist. Amnesty International reports that 3.8 million of the Syrian refugees live in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Analysts, criticizing Saudi funding the export of radical programs like Wahhabism, suggest that the Gulf governments survive and even prosper by limiting speech and new ideas: “Such prosperity comes from a cautious internal security policy, one that actually places key emphasis on who is allowed in and out of the country,” writes Marc Owen Jones for the New Statesman. He adds that such methods of governance are not sustainable: “In the Gulf Countries, the majority of the population of foreign, but get no privileges, while the small minority get a hugely disproportionate amount.” Thousands of refugees would influence the small countries. The crisis, Jones concludes, exposes the weakness of Gulf States in that they cannot withstand the threat of the most desperate of outsiders and their ideas. – YaleGlobal