UN High Commissioner says anti-Syrian refugee rhetoric helps extremists

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Monday that those who "reject Syrian refugees, and especially if they are Muslim, are the best allies of the propaganda and the recruitment of extremist groups."

It was a veiled reference to people like Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who proposed banning foreign Muslims from entering the United States. "We must not forget that — despite the rhetoric we are hearing these days — refugees are the first victims of such terror, not its source," Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council. "They cannot be blamed for a threat which they're risking their lives to escape."

Over the past five years, more than 4.3 million Syrians have left their homes, Reuters reports. Guterres said there's a chance that terrorists could slip in among refugees, "but this possibility exists for all communities — and homegrown radicalization is by far the biggest threat, as all recent incidents have shown." He cited a UN survey of 1,200 Syrian refugees in Europe that showed 86 percent had a secondary education and nearly half had attended a university. "Syria is experiencing a massive brain drain," he said. "One can only imagine the disastrous consequences of such an exodus on the future post-conflict reconstruction of Syria."

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