Kuwaiti Official: "We Should Never Allow Refugees in our Country"—It's Too Expensive For Them!
09/06/2015
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I haven’t found any evidence that this is for real. I don’t speak Arabic so I have no idea if the subtitles are wholly made up or not. And the “Kuwaiti official” has a good face for television comedy. But still …

UPDATE: Okay, I was overly-cautious (I’d rather err on the side of caution.)

  • Commenter Arabic Speaker says the subtitles are a pretty accurate translation. (I’ve seen somebody suggest that “Kuwait and the other [Persian Gulf countries] are too valuable to accept any refugees” could be translated as “too expensive.”)
  • Commenter DK says the speaker is “Fahad Al Shalami (also spelled Fahed al-Shelaimi), is (according to Al Jazeera) a security analyst and former colonel in the Kuwaiti army.” In this 2012 Al-Jazeera video he is participating in English in a panel discussion on Syrian policy as some kind of expert on Syria. He’s not identified by Al-Jazeera as an official voice of the Kuwaiti government; perhaps he’s some kind of public face of the Kuwait deep state?

In any case, it seems pretty plausible that this is how the Gulf Arab governments more or less see the situation, which is why they have taken in as refugees virtually none of their Arab brethren from Syria.

Of course, we here in the West know far better, having read numerous Tumblrs about the situation ever since that little boy drowned.

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