Refugees

Anonymous sources report that Turkey is considering a number of options to help Syrian President Bashar al Assad defuse the uprising in his country.

According to Ivan Watson, CNN's Istanbul based correspondent, multitudes of Syrians are entering Turkey. 10,757 Syrian refugees in total. 12 have been recorded having bullet wounds. 441 recorded having returned to Syria in past 24 hours, and 76 new arrivals today, Ivan reported.

On June 23, the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, reportedly spoke with his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem, about the security situation in Syria. Both apparently discussed the movement of Syrian troops and refugees on their shared border, a situation that has created tension for both.

Despite the public condemnation of Syrian President Bashar al Assad for his regime’s use of violence against the opposition, Turkey has privately endorsed a strategy towards Syria that endorses Syrian internal political and social reforms.

Turkey has provided Syrian opposition forces, including the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), open forums to organize.

According to STRATFOR sources, one of the options Turkey is considering is a political model akin to the Lebanese political system. Lebanon operates on a confessional system and on a 1932 census that roughly divides power between the country’s Christian and Muslim sects. The proposal for Syria would entail equally dividing power between the country’s Arab and Kurdish Sunni majority and the country’s minorities — Alawites, Druze and Christians. The system would create checks and balances to prevent either side from monopolizing the political system or imposing its will on the other.

[2011-02-22 UPDATE The Catch 22 of Australian Immigration for child refugees like Seena]

The online investigative unit of ABC News Australia has obtained information of severe overcrowding at the refugee detention facility on Christmas Island. A planned capacity of 200 is now being utilised apparently now for some 522 inmates.

Almost half of the children currently held in immigration detention reached Australian shores without their parents.

In relation to those child refugees, it gets worse, as Immigration's internal decision making follows Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" logic almost to the letter:

A young applicant's prospects of being reunited with their parents is further limited by what is known as the 'time of decision rule'. This means that if a young person turns 18 prior to their own protection visa being approved, or their family members' visas being approved, their right to reunite with their parents under the split-family provision is lost.

Readers of "Catch 22" may recall that whenever those World War Two pilots got near the required number of missions to be sent home, Colonel Cathcart simply increased the number of missions required for all pilots.

The Immigration Department does not classify the parent of someone over 18 as 'a member of the immediate family' and therefore they are ineligible to apply under 'split-family' provisions.