The world is in the middle of the worst refugee crisis since WWII, largely because five years brutal civil war in Syria has sent some 4 million people pouring out of the country. That much you already know.
But one of the key players in this war — and by many accounts its instigator — says it has a solution for that.
That's right, we're talking about the Syrian government.
This week, Syrian National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar told Russian news website Sputnik the following:
"The Syrian government put in place a complete strategy to stop the refugee flow from Syria and needs help to put this plan into action," Ali Haidar said."
Haider's plan, which he says Damascus plans to submit to the UN, involves constructing safe passages for returning refugees, establishing refugee centers and rebuilding destroyed homes and villages. Haider says this plan has already proved effective in a city just east of Damascus called al-Husseiniya. There, he says some 15,000 residents have been repatriated.
He goes on:
"We have rebuilt all town infrastructure, and we are providing them with food, schooling and medical help."
But this news comes on the heels of international condemnation of a deadly bombing carried out by the forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the Damascus suburb city of Douma — where more than 100 people died and 200 more were injured in a air attack on a crowded marketplace.
So, while we're all for solutions to ease the devastating refugee outpour and break down of the Syrian landscape, hearing it from one of the main sources of the destruction kind of falls on deaf ears.
