The Syrian Conflict & The European Refugee Crisis Explained in an Animated Primer

In a quick six min­utes, the ani­ma­tion above explains the ori­gins of two very relat­ed prob­lems — the Syr­i­an Con­flict & the Euro­pean Refugee Cri­sis. How did the cri­sis first erupt? How did it lead to a refugee cri­sis? And why should we why put xeno­pho­bic fears aside and pro­vide refugees with a safe haven in the West? All of these ques­tions get addressed by “Kurzge­sagt” (“in a nut­shell” in Ger­man), whose time­ly ani­ma­tions you can find on Youtube (includ­ing a sep­a­rate video on the rise of ISIS in Iraq).

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Comments (14)
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  • Domimi says:

    Quite a sub­jec­tive video. Sor­ry, but I ain’t putting my ‘xeno­pho­bic’ atti­tude aside. The stig­ma­ti­sa­tion for islam, and its fol­low­ers, did not not arise from a thin air. I will always think about the good of our sur­round­ings first and only then help those out­side of the EU.

  • Worried EU citizen says:

    Pray­ing five times a day in the direc­tion of Mek­ka — Sau­di Ara­bia, with their behinds direct­ed at Chris­t­ian-Lib­er­al Europe. But in the end they all want to flee to the EU. And ‘all’ mean­ing the refugees of which 80 to 90 % are men in the prime of their lives. In many EU coun­tries we here of vio­lence in the refugee camps, fun­da­men­tal­ists, fights (read: WAR) between dif­fer­ent eth­nic­i­ties, rape, forced pros­ti­tu­tion.….
    But there’s a more fun­da­men­tal prob­lem: around the year 1100 both in the Islam­ic as well as in the Chris­t­ian world the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion was asked: what is the true source of knowl­edge? The islam­ic world in the per­son of Al-Ghaz­a­li came to the con­clu­sion: there’s only one source of the truth and that’s the quran (and the oth­er ‘holy’ books), i.e. the ‘word of Allah’. Al-Ghaz­a­li even said that this Greek idea of ‘causal­i­ty’ is an illu­sion.
    In the chris­t­ian world peo­ple came to the con­clu­sion that we can look at God’s cre­ation as well to find the truth so we are not only bound by the teach­ings of the bible.
    After that in the West we had growth of trade and inter­na­tion­al con­tacts, we’ve had a Renais­sance, an Enlight­ment, an Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tians, social rev­o­lu­tions, the atom­ic age, the space age, the infor­ma­tion age, and so on. But in the Islam­ic world they still cling to the idea that the quran is the only source of truth.…… That is going to cause A LOT of trou­bles in the future; if we let in too many refugees it may pos­si­bly throw us back into the Mid­dle Ages!!! WE DON’T WANT THAT!!!
    #why­don­ty­ougo­to­saudi­ara­bi­ay­oufools

  • UrsaMajor says:

    What a bunch of self-right­eous hypocrisy, both in the video and in this com­ment thread. Most of the prob­lems in the world today are a direct result of first “Euro­pean,” and then the USA med­dling in the affairs of oth­er coun­tries via eco­nom­ic, cyber, and/or mil­i­tary war­fare, assas­si­na­tions, and coups. Don’t want to deal with the “refugee cri­sis” (which, by the way, did­n’t just begin yes­ter­day)? STOP FCUKING WITH THOSE PEOPLE! Leave the fcuk­ing oil in the ground!

  • Kelley says:

    If these Islam­ic refugees need some place to go, then they should be try­ing to assim­i­late into oth­er Islam­ic coun­tries, not into cul­tures that they abhor. This is why it’s impos­si­ble to trust the sin­cer­i­ty of this entire move­ment.

  • Worried EU citizen says:

    And why can the West med­dle with their affairs? Because the islam­ic world for the most part is a back­ward world. If they did­n’t have the oil to sell their con­di­tion would even be worse. The only thing that I have bought from the Mid­dle East besides oil is figs, dates, olives, olive oil, oranges and so on. They sold that two thou­sand years ago as well.…..

  • Jonas says:

    It seems empa­thy is a rare good these days…

  • Womens rights says:

    Dear Jonas, my sym­pa­thie is with the women and girls in the coun­tries that accept refugees. Since the start of the influx of refugees in ‘very empa­thet­ic’ Swe­den that coun­try is now rape coun­try nr. 2 in the world. Only in Lesotho the rape num­bers are high­er.
    In IS-lam women and girls are hard­ly human. And Chris­t­ian women and girls are’nt even human at all.

  • Adam Faigen says:

    Seri­ous­ly? What the “civ­i­lized” world is fail­ing to real­ize is: NO ONE CHOOSES WHERE THEY ARE BORN. NO ONE CHOOSES THEIR PARENTS, AND BY EXTENSION: NO ONE CHOOSES THEIR RELIGION. Before I say any­thing else: I am White. I am Amer­i­can, and I am appalled. Not just at this, not just at the amount of indif­fer­ent peo­ple, not even at those hor­ri­ble peo­ple all around us (many in this com­ments sec­tion) who are as bad if not worse than the ter­ror­ists they’re so afraid of, even Hop­ing that these inno­cent PEOPLE (the refugees) all die. There are good and bad from EVERY coun­try, Every reli­gion, Every­thing! Even each one of us has good and bad traits inside our­selves. WE ALL ARE HUMAN. WE ALL DESERVE THE OPTION TO LEAVE SOMEWHERE WE FEEL IN DANGER AND SEEK REFUGE, NOT TO MENTION LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. #Coex­ist #Peace

  • Ferrell Varner says:

    Mus­lims are good peo­ple. Islam, how­ev­er, has brought noth­ing moral­ly or eth­i­cal­ly to the table that was­n’t already there. It did bring a warm sense of fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty, the world wide “umma”. Unfor­tu­nate­ly Islam also brought:
    1. Label­ing every­one else as an “oth­er”.
    2. Join­ing church/mosque and state
    3. An endorse­ment of using vio­lence to solve reli­gious and oth­er ques­tions.
    Reli­gions seem to even­tu­al­ly emu­late their founders. Chris­tian­i­ty has become more and more inclu­sive, tol­er­ant and peace­ful. To a large extent Islam was, and remains, judg­men­tal, intru­sive in all areas of life and vio­lent in reli­gious issues.
    We all hope for a “ref­or­ma­tion”

  • Womens rights says:

    Adam, please don’t get to emo­tion­al…
    in some coun­tries in the EU the per­cent­age of mus­lims since WWII has gone up from 0% of the pop­u­la­tion being mus­lim to now some 10% being mus­lim.
    In the US less than 1% of the pop­u­la­tion is mus­lim.
    The pop­u­la­tion of the US now is some 321+ mil­lion.
    1% of that is 3.21 mil­lion.
    Times 9 is 28.89 mil­lion; so in the US there is ‘room’ for that amount of islam­ic immi­grants before you get to the same per­cent­age as the EU.
    So if you, the US, take in all the Syr­i­an refugees.…
    Prob­lem solved.
    Next!

  • Bill W. says:

    While I have sym­pa­thy for the plight of the refugees, we also need to keep-in-mind WHY Sau­di Ara­bia and oth­er Islam­ic coun­tries are not tak­ing refugees…Islam is spread by either the mur­der or dis­place­ment of native pop­u­la­tions, which is how Islam con­quered North Africa, and the Lev­ant. The House of Saud is hop­ing the same strat­e­gy works for out­breed­ing Europe’s Chris­t­ian (and sec­u­lar) pop­u­la­tions, as it did when they con­quered south­ern Europe before being eject­ed dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages when Chris­t­ian Euro­peans rose-up and took their con­ti­nent back.

  • Argl Borps says:

    Just like in Swe­den, where after open­ing the bor­ders for a mas­sive influx of most­ly mus­lim immi­grants the rape rate went up 1400% (yep that’s four­teen­hun­dred) over the last 20 years. All smooth sail­ing!

  • Klaus says:

    If you are buy­ing at the super­mar­ket, dri­ve a car or take pub­lic trans­porta­tion and heat your apart­ment, then you are depen­dent on the oil in the ground and you are a big hyp­ocrite! And don’t tell me that you are only using what is absolute­ly nec­es­sary, for your “neces­si­ties” are con­sid­ered extreme lux­u­ries in oth­er parts of the world. Grow up and do your best not to waste resources, but don’t force your mis­in­formed opin­ion on oth­er peo­ple.

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