The City of Prince George should be both complimented and cautioned for endorsing a resolution asking the federal government to do more to aid and eventually settle Syrian refugees.
As a city in the larger global community, Prince George residents and their local government see this as the world's problem and want to be part of the solution, rather than sitting it out and waiting for Turkey and the European Union to fix it. Canada is one of the wealthiest nations in the world with some of the highest standards of living. We have the means to help and there is a moral obligation to provide assistance to people fleeing for their lives from war zones.
There are serious concerns about some of the people leaving Syria and whether they are refugees. Specifically, there are worries that terrorists or sympathizers of the Islamic State are embedded among the refugees, eager to make their way into Western nations to spread hate and violence.
Those concerns should not be ignored.
Refugee camps not only draw innocent bystanders but also supporters of one of the sides of the conflict, some of them active supporters who took up arms but put them down and fled with their families and some passive supporters who provided assistance. Twenty years ago, for example, the Rwandan refugee camps included thousands of people who took part in the genocide.
In the world of humanitarian aid, assistance is provided first, questions are asked later, which is the proper - if sometimes problematic - response. Just because a man committed war crimes before joining his family as refugees doesn't mean his wife and children don't deserve food and protection. It does mean he will have to be held accountable at some point, but, when millions are swarming borders and overwhelming governments and aid agencies, some point has to be a later time down the road.
In other words, Prince George, Canada and the world are right to open their arms (and their wallets) to help the Syrian refugees, but that can still be done without wearing rose-coloured glasses. Help everyone now but don't forget to weed out the bad apples later.
In this case, however, there may be fewer bad apples than normal.
The Islamic State is not a group of random terrorists causing mayhem in Syria and Iraq. As Graeme Wood pointed out in his excellent analysis piece in the March issue of The Atlantic magazine, the Islamic State is an open book on both its identity and its goals.
For starters, it is a caliphate, the technical term for an Islamic state and style of government that favors a fundamentalist reading of the Qur'an. The lands they have occupied are holy in their eyes and only belong to true believers. People can stay but only if they faithfully and obediently subscribe to religious law and customs. There is no room for moderates or for those of other faiths.
The announcement of a caliphate (this is the first in 90 years) has special meaning for devout Muslims, Wood explains, because it compels them to come home. That means that, generally speaking, the true believers in this caliphate are staying behind. They have no desire to live amongst the infidels. While the Islamic State uses violence and fear in the same way Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups do, the Islamic State is inward looking. It cares only about its people, the land God has set aside for them, following God's laws and preparing for the final battle and the apocalypse, not about exporting terror.
Put another way, the Islamic State has already declared the Syrian refugees as unworthy, making them the exact people the world needs to take in.
Where the City of Prince George does have to be careful is in not becoming distracted from its core duties. Local citizens have great latitude to work with various organizations to sponsor refugees to come to Canada. Local and provincial governments, however, have no direct power or input in the matter. In the end, their only duty is to serve taxpayers by fulfilling their mandated responsibilities. From that standpoint, roads, not refugees, is the primary focus for local government.
Yet local government still has a role to play as an advocate, encouraging its citizens and other levels of government to act. The focus can still be on roads but that doesn't mean that mayors and city councillors shouldn't do what they can to help refugees at the same time.
