It is strange how occasionally a single picture stands out so dramatically from other scenes of misery that it changes the world. A lot of people have drowned as they try to cross the Mediterranean and find safety in Europe but there was something so absolutely shocking in seeing three year old Aylan Kurdi laying dead at the waters edge on a Turkish beach.
He was so nicely dressed and it seemed that the vastly overcrowded boat capsized, resulting in not only his death but that of his mother and brother. Only his distraught father survived, and that picture had a lot to do with Germany and Austria throwing open their borders and increasing their acceptance of refugee numbers.
We are seeing the worst that humans can do to one another in the conflict that is roiling the Middle East and parts of Africa. Islamic State is imposing a form of religious dogma that demands total obedience and people smugglers are enriching themselves cramming incredible numbers of people into anything that floats. When these hordes make landfall they are unwelcome and entire countries try to move them on. They become the flotsam and jetsam of war and the news scenes filling the nightly news are reminiscent of what followed the end of the second world war.
Sadly, nothing is about to change. There are no signs that the United Nations is about to order the countries that makeup it's members to create an armed force to restrain IS. The "veto " and self interest will see to that. The people smugglers have an unending supply of customers prepared to put their lives on the line - and they will continue to line their pockets with gold as desperate people see Europe as their only hope of escaping death.
Some who make the crossing will establish a new life but for others they will end up an unhappy minority, resented as a burden by their new hosts and incapable of making the transition of thinking to mesh in with their country of acceptance. It is quite possible that they will cluster in nationalistic groups, clinging to their native tongues and living a tribal existence in a mood of hostility.
They will change the makeup of the countries accepting them and many see this as a religious invasion. The numbers will certainly bring religious tensions and new thinking in the world of politics, and there seems no reason why this outward flow will cease and we may be on the verge of a new world distribution of people - because this flow seems unstoppable !
The answer to the problem seems so simple. A hundred years ago the great powers created lines on maps that created countries that suited their colonial ambitions - and took absolutely no regard to tribal affinities or the placement of people numbers. The time has come to recreate borders that make sense and carve up the old land mass in new ways, and by doing so we would create the safety that this present wave of refugees is seeking.
This vast wave is fleeing terror. Given the safety of a reasonable enclave in their home country guaranteed by a United Nations force and this mass exodus would cease. The forms of government presently representing countries with unnatural borders would simply have to accept this change because the armed forces of the United Nations has the military power to enforce far beyond the capacity of their national military capacity to resist.
This was - after all - exactly what the United Nations was originally formed to deliver. A world body with the power to settle disputes and wield the power to stop wars !
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