难民危机拷问欧洲灵魂

    在旁观者看来，欧洲大陆正在经历一场灵魂之战。

    面对二战以来最大规模的移民潮，欧洲不同国家的人民和政府做出了截然不同的反应，有人表现出彻底的仇恨和愤怒，有人则展示出令人难以置信的仁慈和慷慨。欧洲大陆的财富水平和历史有着巨大的差异，如今面对难民潮，在如何应对方面，各国之间也出现了令人痛心的差别。

    上周末以来，数百名德国人和奥地利人驱车来到匈牙利，接走聚集在当地的难民，帮助他们完成这一苦难之旅，去追求更美好、更安全的生活。在维也纳、慕尼黑和其他地区，也有数百人有组织地在车站向难民发放食物，提供栖身之所。这些都是普通人自发的、令人振奋的决定。面对严重的人道主义危机，他们做了政府未能做到的事情；上周，三岁小男孩艾兰•库尔迪的遗体被冲上土耳其海岸，而这些欧洲民众树立的形象，或许可以冲淡这一惨剧带来的阴霾。

    但与此同时，德国仍不断发生针对难民居所的纵火袭击。上周末，德国西南部的罗滕堡发生了针对一处避难所的袭击，导致五人受伤，而在德国东部的罗肯苏斯拉，三栋预备用于容纳难民的空房子在大火中被烧毁。警方怀疑这是人为纵火。

    面对各界要求政府发挥领导作用的压力，欧洲各国的领导人也开始接受强制性配额制度，安置难民，以缓解希腊、意大利和匈牙利几个主要难民集中点的压力。法国总统弗朗索瓦•奥朗德称，作为欧洲难民安置计划的一部分，法国将接收2.4万名难民。目前，欧洲聚集了12万难民。

    奥朗德在新闻发布会中表示：“面对汹涌而至的难民，我们必须本着人道主义和负责任的态度进行应对。”

    这项决定需要一定的政治勇气。为下一届总统大选进行的民意调查显示，反对移民的（和强烈反伊斯兰的）马林•勒庞已经领先。法国的民意调查还显示，55%的民众反对开放德国边境。

    英国则选择退出欧盟的移民安置计划。之前，公众突然高涨的同情心令政府措手不及，于是英国首相戴维•卡梅伦在周一表示，英国将再接收2万名叙利亚难民。但这种态度并没有听上去那么慷慨，因为这个任务的跨度长达四年，不过面对巨大压力，卡梅伦或许会在未来几周做出更大的让步。

    不过，目前的焦点依旧集中在德国。今年，德国预计将接收80万难民和移民，这相当于德国总人口的1%。仅在上个月便有超过10万名难民涌进德国。

    本周一，德国总理安格拉•默克尔在柏林召开的新闻发布会上表示：“我很高兴看到德国成为许多海外人士心目中的希望之地。考虑到我们的历史，这一点尤为可贵。”

    上周末，默克尔政府说到做到，开始行动起来。因为他们意识到，从长远来看，解决难民问题不可能只依靠志愿者的贡献。在今年大部分时间里，德国在应对希腊问题时给人留下了吝啬、心胸狭隘的印象，但这一次，德国却追加了60亿欧元（约合67亿美元）公共资金，用于解决难民问题。

    然而，此次移民危机的规模远远超过了1989年柏林墙倒塌和上世纪90年代巴尔干战争之后的移民潮，因此肯定会引起公众和政府的警惕。财政吃紧和反对移民的情绪依旧是欧元区挥之不去的阴影。目前，整个欧元区的失业人数仍有1740万人。许多在欧洲出生和长大的人前往伊斯兰国，成为圣战分子，因此人们对接收更多穆斯林会心存忧虑，担心他们难以被同化（但这种担忧有失偏颇，因为许多叙利亚难民都是在城市里长大的中产阶级，他们接受过良好的教育，他们与富有的欧洲白种人一样憎恨伊斯兰国的原教旨主义。）

    巨大的分歧仍然存在：英国政府准备从约旦和黎巴嫩的难民营接收更多难民，但丹麦政府却在黎巴嫩报纸上刊登广告，警告难民，他们很难进入丹麦，而且他们在丹麦的生活会更加艰难。对于庇护权反对声音最激烈的是匈牙利和其他后共产主义国家，这些国家似乎忘记了二十多年前，他们自己的国民是多么渴望逃离。

    目前，各界关注的焦点仍集中在人道主义方面。但焦点很快便会转移。卡梅伦和奥朗德在周一决定加大军事干预，这等于认同了一个观点：化解难民危机的最佳途径是解决导致难民涌入的根本原因。

    卡梅伦向议会报告称，英国皇家空军的无人机在八月份已经多次前往叙利亚作战，击毙了在英国出生、现为伊斯兰国作战的圣战分子。虽然两年前，英国议会曾驳回他要求对叙利亚实施空袭的提案。奥朗德表示，法国将派飞机在叙利亚开展军事侦察，为可能的空袭做准备。

    但至少在目前，由于地面形势错综复杂，强有力的军事行动尚不是最佳选择。英法两国均痛苦地发现，仅靠空中打击无法保卫和平。而要保持各方团结一致似乎也不可行，因为该地区主要的北约成员国土耳其，与伊拉克和叙利亚库尔德人的冲突日益激烈。土耳其在周一再次对位于伊拉克境内的库尔德工人党武装分子实施攻击。周日，库尔德工人党武装袭击了土耳其东部的一个军用车队，造成了人员伤亡。

    即便最终实施军事行动，至少它会有明确的起点和终点。但欧洲人的灵魂之战何时才能有结果？他们如何保持基督教徒的慈悲之心，维护基本的人类尊严，同时制定出一项可行的政策，控制日益增多的难民对欧洲著名的社会保障体系造成的压力？在可以预见的未来，这场战争恐怕将持续下去。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    审校：任文科

    It’s like watching a battle for the soul of a whole continent.

    The peoples and governments of Europe have reacted in wildly differing ways to the biggest migration of people since the end of World War II, ranging from outright hostility and violence to scarcely-credible displays of humanity and generosity. The continent, with its hugely varied wealth levels and history, is bitterly divided on how to cope–and it shows.

    Over the weekend, hundreds of Germans and Austrians drove to Hungary to pick up refugees and help them complete their arduous journey to a better, safer life. Hundreds more organized to provide the newly arriving with food and shelter at rail stations in Vienna, Munich and elsewhere. These were spontaneous, uplifting decisions by ordinary people to do what their governments had failed to do in the face of a terrible humanitarian emergency; they created images that went as far as anything could to countering that of three year-old Aylan Kurdi’s body, washed up on a Turkish shore last week.

    Yet at the same time, the wave of arson attacks in Germany against homes earmarked for refugees continues. Over the weekend, Five people were injured in an attack on an asylum in Rottenburg in south-west Germany, while three empty buildings slated to house refugees in Rockensussra in the east of the country were destroyed in a fire. Police suspect arson.

    Under pressure to provide leadership, European leaders are starting to come round to accepting a mandatory quota system for resettling refugees to relieve the pressure on the worst choke points in Greece, Italy and Hungary. French President Francois Hollande said his country would take 24,000 as part of a plan to resettle across the E.U. 120,000 migrants currently stuck there.

    “Faced with this inflow of refugees, we have to act with humanity and responsibility,” Hollande told a press conference.

    That’s an act of some political courage in a country where the anti-immigrant (and very anti-Islamic) Marine Le Pen is already leading opinion polls for the next presidential election. Opinion polls in France still show 55% of the population opposed to the country opening its borders à l’allemande.

    In Britain, which has an opt-out from the E.U. plan, Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday the U.K. will take 20,000 additional Syrian refugees after being wrong-footed by an abrupt surge in public sympathy. The gesture isn’t as generous as it sounds because the number is supposed to be spread over four years, but the pressure on Cameron seems likely to lead to much bigger concessions in the coming weeks.

    But the focus remains squarely on Germany, which expects to receive 800,000 refugees and migrants–equivalent to 1% of its entire population–this year. Over 100,000 arrived last month alone.

    “I am happy that Germany has become a country that many people outside of Germany now associate with hope,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference in Berlin Monday. “This is something to cherish when you look back at our history.”

    Over the weekend, Merkel’s government put its money where its mouth is, fully aware that it can’t rely on volunteer contributions for the long term. The country stereotyped for most of this year as tight-fisted and narrow-minded in its dealings with Greece approved an extra €6 billion ($6.7 billion) of public spending to address the refugee issue.

    But a migration crisis that goes far beyond anything seen either after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 or the Balkan wars of the 1990s can’t help but cause alarm, both at the popular and government level. Money is still tight and anti-immigrant sentiment still throws a long shadow in a Eurozone where there are still 17.4 million unemployed. Many, having seen images of European born-and-bred jihadis going off to join Islamic State, fret about accepting more Muslims who they fear would be hard to assimilate (albeit that fear seems ill-judged, given that many of the Syrian refugees are urban, educated, middle-class people who abhor the backward fundamentalism of IS as much as any wealthy white European).

    Inconsistencies abound: while the British government prepares to take more refugees from the camps in Jordan and Lebanon, the Danish one is taking out ads in Lebanese newspapers warning them about how it’s making it harder for them to move and live in Denmark. The most strident opponents of the right to asylum are Hungary and other post-Communist countries, who seem to have forgotten how keen their citizens were to flee only two decades ago.

    Attention is rightly focusing on the humanitarian aspects of the crisis right now. But it may start to shift soon. Both Cameron and Hollande moved closer to military intervention Monday, in a nod to those who argue that the best way to stop the crisis is to stop the cause of the refugee flow.

    Cameron told parliament that Royal Air Force drones had flown sorties in Syria in August, killing British-born jihadis fighting for Islamic State. That’s despite parliament rejecting his proposal to bomb Syria two years ago. Hollande, meanwhile, said France would start military reconnaissance flights over Syria in preparation for possible airstrikes.

    But a cogent military campaign is off the cards for now at least, due to the bewildering complexity of the situation on the ground. Both France and the U.K. are painfully aware they can’t secure peace with airstrikes alone. And keeping a coalition together seems impossible, given that Turkey, the region’s key NATO member, is increasingly in conflict with the Kurds in Iraq and Syria. Turkey’s airforce renewed airstrikes Monday against Kurdish PKK fighters in Iraq after the PKK attacked a military convoy in eastern Turkey Sunday, causing fatalities.

    A military campaign, if it ever comes, will at least have a distinct start and end. But the battle for Europe’s soul–how to meet the demands of Christian charity and basic human decency while devising a practical policy for managing the ever-growing numbers straining its famed social safety nets–it would be foolish to expect an end to that in any foreseeable timeframe.