Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin, has managed to retain high approval ratings despite his slumping economy by seizing Crimea from Ukraine and participating in the Syrian war that is destabilizing the Mideast and, increasingly, Europe and the West.
I am Syrian, I was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.
While Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator and should be tried at the Hague for international war crimes, the United States should not militarily overthrow him.
The challenge there is that ISIL doesn't have an air force, so the damage done there is not against ISIL, it's against the Syrian regime.
It is only up to the Syrian people living in Syria to determine who, how and based on what principles should rule their country, and any external advice would be absolutely inappropriate, harmful and against international law.
The E.U. should pay more attention to the plight of African nations hosting large numbers of refugees themselves - at times for decades.
I am also integration minister and speak with many refugees. When I ask if they came with the goal of living in Greece or Poland, most of them answer "no."
I'm writing a novel about the Syrian war. It will be completely different from my short stories. I have to address my feelings directly because I cannot avoid the war. It's something in my soul, in my blood.
I am so impressed by UNHCR staff who live and work side by side with the refugees. It's really remarkable.
The media is more concerned with what we feel about the refugees and so on rather than what we think about them.
A lot of people don't understand that refugees especially, are fleeing situations that are affecting their livelihood and their children's livelihood.
That U.N. Security Council resolution requires getting Syrian troops and intelligence officials out of Lebanon so that the Lebanese can have elections here this spring that are free and fair and free of outside influence.
Nobody wants anybody who's radical, who wants to move in here to be able to gain access. I said we should take a pause on these Syrian migrants. And I believe we should do that.
Somebody's going to have to stand up to ISIS. It is a threat. When we have Americans beheaded, when we have people posing as refugees and become terrorists as in France, this is a scary time in the world.
I grew up around Vietnamese refugees, around people who don't speak English as a first language.
Social niceties are not in order for men who would turn away refugees fleeing for their lives based on their faith to have them suffer in camps.
It's not about me, again, this fight is not my fight, it's not the fight of the government ; it's the fight of the country, of the Syrian people.
I have also been saddened, though hardly surprised, by the weakness of the EU's reaction to the criminal attack on the Danish embassy in Syria, which seems to have been permitted, if not actively encouraged, by the Syrian regime.
When children and youth are deprived of their right to education, their community is deprived of a sustainable future. It is all the more true with refugees.
The idea that Hillary Clinton's plan wants to increase Syrian refuges by 550 percent is very concerning to many Americans. They know what has happened. They know there's home-grown terrorism here.
Just as the Torah and Bible teach concern for those in distress, the Koran instructs all Muslims to make caring for widows, orphans, and refugees a priority.
Apart from my children, spending time with refugees was the greatest gift... the greatest life lesson I could ever receive.
Honestly, if they were Christian refugees coming in, I think the Obama administration would vet them a little more toughly.
One of the reasons I think Barack Obama had the policy he did was purposely to create this flood of refugees from Syria. He wanted them!
As a global society, we have the technology, resources and the know-how to make a massive difference to living standards everywhere, including for refugees.
The U.N. had such lofty goals to eliminate poverty and stop war and cure diseases and help refugees - things that no one country could do.
We also can't be naïve when it comes to the refugees. Men who commit violence should of course be deported to their countries of origin. We already have enough problems here and we don't need to import anymore.
I'm the daughter of refugees. The immigrant mentality is to work hard, be brave, and never give up in your pursuit of achieving the American dream.
We need to shift our focus from the debates about redistributing refugees within the E.U. and should concentrate more on external border protection.
If you get the U.N. to say we're going to solve the Syrian problem, if you get the Russians involved in a productive posture, you are making progress, but the Republican core says no strategy or failed strategy.
Europe is creating the flight of refugees that's tearing it apart politically, and leading rightwing nationalist parties to gain power to withdraw from the Eurozone.
Any external support, if you want to call it support, let's use this world, is... how to say... it's going to be additional, but it's not the base to depend on more than the Syrian support.
At the beginning of the Syrian conflict, I was optimistic. But now, I'm pessimistic, because it's so complicated. It's much worse than before. The whole world is fighting inside of Syria. It will take years and years to resolve.
President Donald J. Trump was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people.
I was born in Canada, but both my parents are Syrian - they moved to Canada in the '70s, and I was born in a 100-percent-Arab house.
We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.
Forcing states to take refugees doesn't take Europe any further.
If there are more and more environmental refugees, they are going to end up on your doorstep too.
I remember when we were in Egypt as refugees. It was tough, but there was always hope - hope that there's light at the end of the tunnel.
There's a video on YouTube where the terrorists clearly make trials [of chemical weapons] on a rabbit and kill the rabbit and said "this is how we're going to kill the Syrian people."
But a rejection of freedom of movement within Europe's own boundaries does not strengthen the case for accepting more migrants and refugees from outside: the reverse, in fact.
We know that ISIS desires operationally to use the Syrian refugee program to infiltrate countries, to use migrant flows as a way to gain an operational foothold in other countries.
In Syria, Vladimir pUTIN sees the chance to make millions of refugees and weaponise them. The US has to take a lead in defending the values of the free world.
My parents are refugees from Vietnam, so they didn't grow up with 'Star Wars.' I don't think they know what's going on in the movie at any given time.
The American obliviousness towards the suffering of Palestinians refugees plays a major part in radicalizing people. And we are fanning the flames of puritanism.
When I was volunteering with Hurricane Katrina refugees in Houston in 2005, I first started thinking about the whole phenomenon of grace under pressure.
No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used, not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.
The central problem in Syria is that Sunni Arabs will not be willing partners against the Islamic State unless we commit to protect them and the broader Syrian population against all enemies, not just ISIS.
We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.
And though various organizations in America and England collected money and sent food parcels to these refugees, nothing was ever received by the Spanish.
If the refugees return to Israel - Israel will cease to exist.
I explained that we would like to adjust our position on the Syrian question to theirs, as, in our view, they are the decisive factor in our relations with our neighbors, and Syria is unimportant.
You don't have to donate money, it can be clothes, or books, or mediavl supplies. So there's so much that can be done [for refugees], the most difficult thing is that first step that decision to do something.
Personally, I do not support the concept of suicide bombings. This is not part of our [syrian] culture. But whether you condemn them or not, suicide bombings are a reality.
The Syrian war was started and fueled by three countries in the region, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey. They acted for the sake of political and economic dominance and in favor of Sunni Islam against the Alawite influence in the government of Syria.
The scandal isn't that refugees want to come to the United States. It's that Trump is abusing these aspiring Americans and closing our doors to them.
The Syrian people do not recognize themselves in the elite politics of the Muslim Brotherhood or the left, each of which is looking for an external power rather than the people's own self-activity.
The unregulated migration of hundreds of thousands of refugees from terrorist safe havens in Syria, Iraq, and Libya has created a very difficult threat environment for Europe.
We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.
Today three-quarters of the Palestinian people are displaced: there are 5 million Palestinian refugees throughout the world.
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