Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Refugees and the Enduring Cruelty of the War on Terror, Twenty Years Later

Refugees and the Enduring Cruelty of the War on Terror, Twenty Years Later

Last updated on: September 20, 2021 at 9:16 am by Melissa Borja

Refugees and the Enduring Cruelty of the War on Terror, Twenty Years Later 2021-09-20T09:16:25-04:00 Melissa Borja

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Twenty years ago today, while Americans cleaned up the wreckage of the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush stood before a Joint Session of Congress and declared that the U.S. was going to wage a “war on terror.” “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there,” Bush said. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

Thus began a war that transformed the U.S. in countless ways. It launched numerous military conflicts overseas. It initiated the creation of new systems for surveillance and intelligence gathering. It prompted an overhaul in security measures at border crossings and airport terminals.

And at this particular moment, as Americans grapple with the chaotic conclusion to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, we see yet another consequence of the War on Terror: how it has upended the U.S. treatment of refugees. On this matter, it has created a particularly cruel situation. The War on Terror set in motion military conflicts that displaced millions of people. At the same time, the War on Terror transformed the U.S.’s system for handling immigrants and refugees, while fostering an Islamophobia that heightened suspicion of refugees, especially Muslim refugees. Put simply, the War on Terror produced two convergent problems: a rise in the number of refugees around the world and a reluctance in the U.S. to admit the refugees whose forced migration it caused in the first place.

An Afghan boy walks in front of one of the many makeshift homes at a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, July 28, 2011 (Christopher Hatch, U.S. Air Force, via Wikimedia Commons)

According to a 2020 report issued by the Costs of War project at Brown University, U.S. military interventions associated with the War on Terror caused the displacement of approximately 37 million people. This figure counts displaced people from Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria. This estimate is on the conservative end, with the real figure possibly as high as 59 million people. Moreover, this figure does not include displaced people in the countries where the U.S. pursued smaller counterterrorism efforts, such as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and Niger.

Only a very small percentage of the people displaced by U.S. military interventions were ever resettled as refugees in the U.S. or elsewhere. Resettlement has been low for several reasons. Sometimes governments favored other solutions. In the case of Afghanistan, for example, the U.S. initially focused on repatriating Afghan refugees who had fled to Pakistan in order to demonstrate American success in overthrowing the Taliban. As the historian Maria Cristina Garcia explained, Afghan repatriation in the immediate aftermath of Operation Enduring Freedom was important for “validating U.S. intervention and signaling to the region the emergence of a stable new post-Taliban society.”

Syrian and Iraqi refugees arrive from Turkey to Skala Sykamias, Lesbos island, Greece, October 30, 2015 (Ggia, via Wikimedia Commons).

But a second major reason that the U.S. has admitted few refugees has been that, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, both immigrants and refugees, especially those who identified as Muslim, have been seen as national security threats. This point illuminates another important consequence of the War on Terror: the reorientation of immigration and refugee policy around national security concerns. The first few years of the War on Terror saw a complete reorganization of the American immigration system as the U.S. government aimed to identify potential terrorists within American borders and screen entrants more effectively in order to prevent terrorists from crossing American borders. Most notably, the 2002 Homeland Security Act shifted the immigration responsibilities of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which had previously been part of the Justice Department, to the newly created Department of Homeland Security, which now oversaw the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In this new system, it became increasingly difficult to enter the U.S., and this included entering the U.S. as a refugee or asylum-seeker. As a result, Garcia argued, “[r]efugees and asylum seekers became casualties of the new security measures.”

To be sure, some of the 37 million people by American military interventions have been resettled as refugees in the U.S. The most visible of these refugees have been participants in the Special Immigrant Visa (S.I.V.) program, which aids individuals who worked directly with the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq. One such S.I.V. recipient is Hussain Mohammed, an Afghan man who began working as a translator and cultural advisor for the U.S. military at the age of 17 and, after ten years of service, received an S.I.V. to migrate to the U.S. in 2014.

But the vast majority of people displaced by the War on Terror have not been resettled in the U.S., which has accepted far fewer refugees than it could have over the past two decades. In the first six years of the War on Terror, the annual U.S. refugee ceiling was set at 70,000, but the actual number of refugees admitted to the U.S. was much lower—in 2002, as low as 27,000 refugees.

The numbers declined even further a decade and a half later, when President Trump took office. In the first year of his term, Trump set the refugee ceiling at 45,000 and only admitted 22,500. For fiscal year 2019, he reduced the refugee ceiling again, this time to 30,000, and for fiscal year 2020, to 18,000 refugees. Trump’s justification was that refugees, who are often Muslim, are a danger to national security. As Trump declared at the signing of one of his executive orders regarding refugee admissions, the goal of his actions was “to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America.”

Even the group that tends to win the most sympathy from the American public—S.I.V. recipients who supported the U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq—have not fared well. As Tazreena Sajjad, an expert on refugees and forced migration, explained, the U.S. admitted only 495 Afghan S.I.V. recipients in the 2020-2021 fiscal year—only a small fraction of the 20,000 Afghans waiting for an S.I.V. and the other 70,000 Afghans eligible to apply for one. Of all of the countries around the world that host Afghan refugees, the U.S. fell far below other nations, at number 22.

East Minneapolis rally and march to to denounce hate speech and hate crimes against Muslims and government surveillance of the Somali community, Minneapolis, September 17, 2016 (Fibonacci Blue, via Wikimedia Commons).

The U.S.’s refusal of refugees in the past two decades has owed not only to the actions of U.S. presidents, but to a broader cultural and political shift associated with the War on Terror: the intensification of anti-Muslim sentiment in the American public. To be sure, negative views of Muslims existed well before the attacks of September 11, and President Bush did make efforts to emphasize that he views Islam’s teachings as “good and peaceful.“ Nevertheless, the government policies of the War on Terror legitimated fear and suspicion of Muslims.

Just as important, the War on Terror, as it was waged in American culture, magnified a powerful and widespread Islamophobia. In the book This Muslim American Life, the writer Moustafa Bayoumi described this phenomenon as “War on Terror culture.” ”War on Terror culture assumes that Muslims collectively are responsible for and sympathetic to all acts of violence by individual Muslims everywhere, unless and until they explicitly say otherwise,” he explained. In American media, “War on Terror culture represents Muslims always and only through the War on Terror lens and never on their own terms” and “promotes the seductive synergy of militarism and entertainment.” And in American politics, it has reorganized the world into stark categories of enemies and allies. “War on Terror culture is essentially the deep institutionalization of George W. Bush’s simplistic proclamation that ‘either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,’ as if there can be no other options, as if you can’t oppose the horrors that the War on Terror delivers and the murderous nihilism of terrorism simultaneously,” wrote Bayoumi.

In this context, Muslims in U.S. have suffered increased discrimination and prejudice over the past two decades. In a 2017 study, the Pew Research Center found that 48% of its respondents reported experiences of anti-Muslim discrimination, compared to 40% ten years earlier. One in three reported being treated with suspicion, one in five reported being on the receiving end of derogatory names, and one in five reported that they had seen anti-Muslim graffiti in their own locales.

While hostility toward Muslims has escalated over the past two decades, it’s important to note that this matter, like many others in the U.S., has become increasingly partisan. The Pew Research Center found that in 2002, 32% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats viewed Islam as a religion that was more likely than others to promote violence among its adherents. However, a 2021 survey found that 72% of Republicans held this view, compared to 32% of Democrats. And, as President Trump’s rhetoric demonstrates, the widespread view of Muslims as terrorists has played a central role in animating opposition to refugees, many of whom are Muslim, at the same time it appears to have energized the nativist elements of his political party.

Although President Trump is no longer in office, the convergence of Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiment has continued to shape events in the current moment. As thousands of Afghan refugees arrive in the U.S. in the wake of the Taliban’s return to power, both Republicans and Democrats have voiced support for their evacuation and resettlement. However, the most vocal opponents to efforts to aid Afghan refugees have come from the right, and they have emphasized a consistent message: that Afghan refugees are a national security threat. “We’ll have terrorists coming across the border,” Congressman Kevin McCarthy said during an August call with other members of the House of Representatives. Here, we see the intersection of dual legacies of the War on Terror: the forced migration of thousands of refugees fleeing a country where the U.S. waged war for two decades, and the fear and hostility toward Muslims that cause many Americans to want to turn these refugees away.

Not far from where I live, the Indiana National Guard is housing over 6,000 Afghan evacuees at Camp Atterbury. If one were to look only at the positive media coverage of the warm community response in the past few weeks, the U.S. appears to be a nation that adores refugees and seizes any opportunity to shower them with care and compassion. People from across the state, eager to show refugees some Hoosier hospitality, are providing medical care, organizing clothing drives, and running a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for refugees’ needs. Even Governor Eric Holcomb took time to visit Camp Atterbury and praise the efforts. “There has been an outpouring of kindness from Hoosiers to welcome those who aided and protected us,” he said.

There is no doubt that many Americans are showing tremendous generosity to the people now arriving from Afghanistan. But a consideration of the broader context of the past twenty years would quickly lay to rest any claims that the U.S., as a nation, is especially kind and generous to refugees. Indeed, stories of American benevolence are useful for shifting attention away from stories of American failure, both overseas and at home. As critical refugee studies scholar Yen Le Espiritu wrote in Body Counts, refugees are often portrayed “as grief-stricken objects marked for rescue and the United States as the ideal refuge for the ‘persecuted and uprooted’ refugees.” Presenting refugees in this way makes it possible for “Americans to remake themselves from military aggressors into magnanimous rescuers.” Ultimately, a narrative centered on Americans “rescuing and caring” for refugees “erases the role that U.S. foreign policy and war played in inducing the ‘refugee crisis’ in the first place.” Espiritu was writing about refugees from Vietnam, but her observations apply just as aptly to refugees from Afghanistan.

Twenty years after the declaration of the War on Terror, as refugees arrive from Afghanistan, it is imperative that Americans acknowledge two things: that the U.S. is responsible, and that the U.S. must be responsible. This means opening the door wider to refugees and confronting the anti-Muslim sentiment that has often blocked the door to refugees. It means recognizing that this disaster was two decades in the making. And it means recognizing that this disaster was very much our making.

Previous Post

September 17, 2021

Bitter Words and Inspired Scriptures

Next Post

September 21, 2021 Church, Government, and Business: Can the Christian University Serve All Three?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe guest post Guest Post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What is the name of the great final battle in Revelation?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Babylon’s Fall Apocalypse The Great Tribulation Armageddon