[Salon] “No quarter, no mercy” - ArabDigest.org Guest Post

“No quarter, no mercy” Summary: the US-Israeli war on Iran and the IDF offensive in Lebanon have caused millions to be internally displaced. As the wars continue, such numbers are likely to increase, heightening the refugee crisis underway in the Arab world which had already seem 19 million displaced while humanitarian aid has sunk to record low levels. We thank Paul Cochrane for today’s newsletter. Paul is an independent journalist covering the Middle East and Africa. He writes regularly for Money Laundering Bulletin, Fraud Intelligence and other specialised titles. Paul lived in Bilad Al Sham (Cyprus, Palestine and Lebanon) for 24 years, mainly in Beirut. He co-directed We Made Every Living Thing from Water a documentary on the political economy of water in Lebanon. A refugee crisis akin to the Syrian refugee crisis - when nearly 5 million fled to neighbouring countries and 2 million onwards to Europe from 2011 to 2016 - has yet to materialise. However over 3.2 million Iranians have been internally displaced and close to a million Lebanese. But while these current wars have not yet caused the same number of displaced people as a decade ago, the region was already struggling to handle millions of refugees prior to the latest illegal US-Israeli wars. In Sudan there are over 9.1 million internally displaced people (IDPs), in Syria 6.07 million, in Yemen 3.06 million, in Gaza 1.9 million, and in Iraq close to a million, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). As the body rightly warns, the escalating conflict in the Middle East is causing a growing humanitarian crisis or perhaps more aptly an even bigger humanitarian crisis. For it is the MENA region that has shouldered the brunt of the crisis and will continue to do so going forward as the doors shutter around the world and Europe enacts increasingly tough border and migration policies. The Middle East is facing an escalating humanitarian crisis with millions internally displaced across Lebanon, Iran, and Gaza, yet global aid has been drastically cut as Western nations prioritise military spending and border security. The crisis has also come at a time when humanitarian aid has been seriously curtailed. This is going to make the plight of IDPs even worse with aid agencies overstretched and unable to provide the critical assistance needed by so many desperate people. The US last year cut the budget of USAID by 83% and absorbed the body into the State Department while also slashing funding for NGOs and UN agencies. The Trump administration also extended the Biden administration’s freeze on funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which the Israeli government has banned claiming it is a ‘terrorist organisation.’ Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and other European countries have also cut back on humanitarian aid, in part to fund the military and meet the NATO percentage of GDP quota Trump has demanded. The cuts in aid are being particularly felt in Lebanon, where nearly a quarter of the country’s population has now been displaced from the South and from Beirut’s southern suburbs after Israel’s forced evacuation orders, the second such mass displacement in less than two years. There is the risk that the displacement may become long-term if the Israelis carry out their threats to destroy and occupy Lebanon south of the Litani River. Palestinian and Syrian refugees meanwhile are feeling the cuts to aid agencies, prompting many Syrians to return to war-ravaged Syria instead of staying in increasingly precarious circumstances in war-ravaged Lebanon. With refugee crisis upon crisis, and economic crisis upon crisis, Lebanon needs major support. The cruelty of such cuts in humanitarian aid is that the Pentagon spent US$ 11.3 billion in the first week of the war on Iran and is seeking a further US$ 200 billion as, in the words of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, “it takes money to kill bad guys.” In February, the US Congress passed legislation earmarking just US$ 5.5 billion for humanitarian aid worldwide. It has long been thus, with aid “part of a PR veneer created around justifying the arms industry,” as Andrew Feinstein, author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, put it. Far more is spent on arms than aid and far less provided in aid than what arms sales generate, as I researched in 2018, when European countries (nearly all of them) sold arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE during the Yemen war worth a staggering 55 times more than the aid that was donated. There has also been a correlation between a conflict’s geographical proximity to Europe and the aid received. The closer a conflict is to the European shores of the Mediterranean, and the chances of migrants trying to cross the sea, the more aid that was then typically provided in what can be termed strategic humanitarian aid. This strategy still holds in terms of providing humanitarian aid for Ukraine – which has remained robust – but elsewhere it is certainly on the wane. Indeed, worldwide, between 2025 and 2026, total humanitarian funding has plunged from US$27.60 billion to around US$8 billion, according to Financial Tracking Service (FTS) data. Such aid, while admittedly fraught with problems – aid dependency, propping up corrupt regimes and so on – does of course assist the victims of war and help people get back on their feet amid a crisis. The aid, in short, provided a stop-gap and meant that IDPs often stayed in their country or a neighbouring one rather than going further afield. The Europeans supported humanitarian aid endeavours to, in part, clean up after US-led wars and proxy wars in the wider Middle East and to prevent migrants heading to Europe. Yet while the US-Israeli wars are causing another forced migration not much is being done by European nations to stop the wars and avert another migration crisis. Instead, despite a refugee crisis just south of Europe being caused by US-Israeli aggression, the EU Migration commissioner Magnus Brunner told the Financial Times on 23 March, “it’s always [Vladimir] Putin who is involved in those big migration movements”, due to Russia’s historical support for the Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad and its backing of Tehran. “He is actually the biggest driver of migration towards Europe” claimed Brunner. Iranians, Lebanese and other displaced people in the wider Middle East may find these words hard to take seriously as US and Israeli fighter jets and predator drones wreak havoc. But the message is clear: you are not welcome in Europe. Indeed, several European countries are calling for the gates of Fortress Europe to be fully closed to prevent a repeat of the Syrian refugee crisis. The Danish and Italian prime ministers have called on the European Council to put in “an emergency brake...as force majeure in the event of sudden large-scale migratory movements towards the Union”. We are in a time where the viciousness of the likes of Trump and Hegseth appear increasingly widespread and accepted by European countries and the UK to give as Hegseth said “no quarter, no mercy” and to proclaim that “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly as it should be.” It is a coarse and dehumanising narrative that applies as much to civilians fleeing war as it does to combatants.