Ms Merkal Regrets.

Germany's Chancellor/Head of Government Angela Merkel was declared Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2015.

Although the award acknowledged her central role in keeping the Eurozone together amid the economic crisis caused by Greece's calamitous SYRIZA government it was primarily given in response to Ms Merkel's response to the refugee crisis caused by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The magazine labelled that response generous, compassionate and tolerant.

Although a magazine which in 2014 declared Beyonce to be the most influential person in the world perhaps lacks credibility this struck me as something of a surprise. That's because Angela Merkel's response to the refugee crisis has always seemed to me an extremely rare error of judgement on her part.

Back in July 2015 Chancellor Merkel was attending what Americans would term a televised town hall event in the German city of Rostock.

One of the questions she faced was from a 14 year old Palestinian girl named only as Reem who wanted to know why her family were not being granted permanent refugee status in Germany. As the Chancellor began to explain Germany's immigration policy Reem burst into uncontrollable tears forcing Merkel to awkwardly try and comfort her.

The video of this meeting went viral on the Internet - Google "Merkel Makes Girl Cry" - and led to Angela Merkel's government being dubbed "The government without empathy."

This more than anything else seems to have triggered Merkel's decision in late August 2015 to announce that all Syrian refugees would be welcomed in Germany.

Although this no doubt allowed Merkel to feel better about herself it was probably one of the worst things that could be done. As with all other aspects of war the refugee crisis created by ISIL requires hard-headed and well thought through solutions rather than easy hashtags and campaign slogans that make us feel better about ourselves.

As I've said throughout what the European Union (EU) needs to do in response to the refugee crisis is to set up what are effectively refugee embassies in Syria, Iraq and the neighbouring states of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

It is from there that asylum applications are processed before those granted refugee status are transported to the EU and distributed fairly amongst the 28 member states. This removes the need for those refugees to make the extremely dangerous sea crossing into the EU and allows the EU to better process them in the key areas of security and integration.

On that first issue of security I have absolutely no doubt the overwhelming majority of those seeking asylum are not a threat to national security.

However it has so long been accepted that those with nefarious intent will try and abuse the asylum process that Article 1(f) of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees makes quite clear that refugee status cannot be granted to those suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity, other crimes against peace or other non-political crimes in their country of origin.

Although there does seem to have been a concerted effort to down-play the risks there is a growing list of those claiming refugee status in the EU being linked to serious terrorist activity.

The most significant of these were the two attackers in the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres who although it turns out were EU citizens had re-entered the EU from Syria posing as asylum seekers.

Then of course there was the case of Osama Abdul Mohsen who became famous after being filmed being kicked by a Hungarian reporter and was rewarded with asylum in Spain and a job at Real Madrid.

Shortly afterwards it emerged that Mohsen has been a member of the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) and had participated in numerous crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity particularly against the Kurdish minority in northern Syria. I am still waiting to hear that the Mohsen family have been expelled from Spain to face justice.

In Finland alone at least 300 asylum seekers have been found to have links with terrorist groups. This figure includes two Iraqi brothers who were arrested on December 10th (10/12/15) not only for being members of ISIL but for personally killing 11 Iraqi soldiers during the Camp Speicher Massacre in which ISIL slaughtered at least 1,700.

This problem is even occurring as far afield as the US. On July 16th (16/7/15) Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez - a refugee from Kuwait - attacked several military installations in and around Chattanooga, Tennessee killing 5 and wounding 2.

Just yesterday (8/1/16) the US confirmed that over the past week it had arrested two Iraqi refugees in California and Texas. One had been planning to travel to join ISIL while the other had fought for ISIL before claiming asylum in the US. However in an effort to cover this up the US is only prosecuting him for lying on his application.

With the US being some 6,000km (3,600 miles) and an entire ocean away from Syria it shouldn't be aiding and abetting ISIL in their crime against humanity of ethnic cleansing by taking in refugees at all. Instead it should be supporting the refugees by doing all it can to destroy ISIL and end the war.

The EU though being closer most certainly does have an obligation to take in refugees from ISIL. However a large part of that obligation is to make sure that terrorists are not allowed to hide amongst those genuinely needing asylum.

The EU not only owes that responsibility to itself but also to the genuine asylum seekers. After all there is no point them taking up refuge in the EU if the EU is just going to let in the people they are fleeing from.

On the issue of integration as I write there a protests going on in Cologne, Germany over the more then 100 sexual assaults on women during the city's New Years Eve (NYE) celebrations. These are said to have been carried out by between 500 and 1000 Arab men who were all either seeking or had been granted asylum. This has widely been viewed as the result of a failure to integrate the massive influx of Syrian refugees.

However as more information has emerged this doesn't actually seem to be the work of a large group of out of control men. Instead it seems to be a co-ordinated criminal enterprise using a tactic which is known in the US as; "Flashmob Robbery" or in the UK by the slang term; "Steaming."

Although this isn't the sort of thing you can do a training course to be certified in it tends to involve a gang of robbers ploughing - like a steam train - through anywhere a crowd is confined such as on a train or at an event such as a NYE celebration. As they force their way through the crowd the gang rob people of whatever they can.

In Cologne the sexual assaults only seem to have been used as a form of violence to facilitate theft. After all a woman who is terrified that she is going to be raped isn't going to be that worried about what happens to her cellphone, purse or jewellery.

This type of robbery is actually pretty common in the US and parts of London, UK particularly on the rail network and at the Notting Hill Carnival. Therefore if the Cologne attacks had happened in London we'd probably be talking about how the refugees had become too well integrated with the black thug culture that has been imported from the US. Curiously "Black Lives Matter" came fourth on Time Magazine's poll.

As such I'm inclined to think that the attacks in Cologne weren't so much a failure to integrate refugees as a failure on the part of the police to identify the threat from criminal elements and put in place an effective security plan.

However it does seem that the police failed to act and then tried to cover up the incident because they were afraid of being seen to saying anything negative about refugees. It is that cover up that people seem to be most angry about.

At around 18:30 on 9/1/16 (UK date) I'll be back to add more detail on that after dinner.

Edited at around 20:10 on 9/1/16 (UK date) to tidy up the above and add;

As information about the incident has been slowly trickling out did seem reasonable to assume that it could have been the result of some cultural integration problem.

I think it's well established that one area where European culture and Arab culture differ is the lower status granted to women in Arab culture. This is particularly true in societies which subscribe to the particularly nasty Whabbist perversion of Sunni Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia.

In Arab societies that were run by secular dictators such as Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt and to a lesser extent Qaddafi in Libya women were largely protected by the very aggressive policing of secular laws. When those dictators and their security apparatus were overthrown the new found freedom did sort of go to everybody's head and even reasonable laws against things like rape and sexual assault were widely ignored.

Egypt's Tahrir Square became notorious for rape and sexual assault particularly when it was used as a deliberate tactic of intimidation by the Muslim Brotherhood during the 2013 revolution.

Even in comparison to somewhere like the US or the UK German society actually has a very open and mature attitude towards sexuality. For example prostitution is legal and pornography is hardly considered a dirty secret.

As a 13/14 year old boy I actually went on a school trip to Cologne. Due to a clerical oversight we ended up being booked into a hotel in the middle of the cities red-light district. I still remember walking past all the prostitutes, brothels and sex shops being quite a head-spinning experience. I imagine the experience would probably worse for a young man arriving from somewhere like Iraq or Syria.

The other big cultural difference between Arab and European societies is of course alcohol. This is widely banned in Arab societies but in European societies - particularly Germany - people drink a lot.

In preparation for the 2015 Oktoberfest which is essentially just everybody getting really drunk throughout the month of October the Bavarian city of Munich actually went to great lengths to make sure that refugees from Arab nations wouldn't be overwhelmed of frightened by seeing large numbers of very drunk people out in public.

The bigger problem probably arises though if the refugees decide they want to integrate with the local culture and try alcohol for themselves. Alcohol of course lowers inhibitions and impairs judgement so everybody who is familiar with it has stories about making ill-judged sexual advances that have earned them a slap in the face or even worse advances that haven't been rebuffed leading to many a morning of regret.

With many of the attackers being reported to be either drunk or smelling heavily of alcohol it would be easy to imagine a situation where some naive young men had been overwhelmed by the local culture and started making some extremely poor decisions. After all I'm pretty sure that's what led to Jeremy Jackson being kicked off the January 2015 season of Celebrity Big Brother UK (CBBUK).

How best to integrate refugees is of course a huge topic to the point where I understand it supports an entire scientific discipline known as Social Anthropology. However I suppose the first big question is what sort of society you are trying to integrate them into.

Until the late-1990's the London borough of Croydon where I grew up was the only port of call for asylum seekers into the UK. Even now it remains the main one. As a result if you talk about Eritrean refugees I immediately think of about a dozen kids I went to school with. If you mention Angola you're talking about a couple of the teachers. Apparently getting the Ugandan guy in and out of Cologne was a major headache. 

Working in the local hospital during the Balkan war my mother is actually surprisingly knowledgeable about how to treat the long term effects of battlefield injuries and wounds sustained during torture. 

Having retired my mother now lives in Salisbury, Wiltshire. Due to its Cathedral this is technically considered a city but compared to London is a small town in the country. It has also been selected as the new home of a group of asylum seekers that the UK is taking in separately from the EU. I have to say that both my mother and I experience quite a lot of bafflement at all the local excitement about when the refugees are coming and where they're going to stay.

I think the only advice either of us can offer is to get over the excitement of them being refugees and just interact with them the way you would anybody else. If they're about to do something stupid, dangerous or that British people would find offensive politely point out their mistake to them. If they become aggressive walk away or call the police.

The other big question of course is who are you trying to integrate. After all a babe in arms who is being adopted is unlikely to know that they were born and orphaned in a different culture. However a 13/14 year old orphan will probably need more help but that will be done by the adoptive parents. A complete family unit of a mother, father and three of four children is a completely different proposition again. As always though young men between the ages of 16 and 30 always present the biggest problems.

If I was to try and draw up a general rule though I would say that you would try and disperse them in groups that aren't so small that people who don't speak the language are completely isolated but not such large groups that they're not forced to interact with the local population. 

After all as any social anthropologist will tell you culture comes not from the laws that are passed by the government and enforced by the police but from that quiet peer pressure of; "That's just not how we do things around here."

Although it may have given her a warm and fuzzy feeling Angela Merkel's emotionally driven response to the refugee crisis seems to have made it more difficult to solve these problems.

The refugee crisis is being caused by the fact that there is a vicious and nasty war being allowed to drag on in Syria and Iraq. Therefore regardless of what Chancellor Merkel or any other EU politicians says or doesn't say it is not a problem that is going to go away until the war is brought to an end with ISIL and associated groups being utterly destroyed.

However by throwing open Germany's doors in welcome Merkel appears to have given many of the refugees the entirely false impression that they will be allowed to start entirely new lives within the EU. The won't. Apart from some extreme exceptions such as orphaned children they will be cared for at the subsistence level until the war ends. They will then be sent back to Iraq and Syria to help rebuild their battered nations.

If the refugees were being told this truth it is likely that they would be in less of a rush to get to Germany instead opting to stay in the first safe country where their money runs out. This would mean far more refugees settling in places like Hungary in Poland. If that happened then those nations would be banging on Germany's door demanding that the EU takes collective action.

As it is with Merkel throwing open Germany's doors eastern EU states are seeing the refugees merely as people passing through. Many of them seem to genuinely believe that the refugee crisis is caused by and began with Chancellor Merkel's invitation. As a result rather than demanding that the EU takes collective action nations such as Hungary are actually trying to block the EU from taking that collective action.

The bonkers demands from Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban in particular has forced the EU into a dangerous level of engagement with Turkey. 

Back at the end of November 2015 the EU was forced to agree to give Turkey USD3bn and visa-free travel in return for tackling the flow of refugees into the EU. As you would expect Turkey is completely failing to live up to its end of this bargain. 

Despite it being winter the flow of refugees out of Turkey has not even slowed. The first death of a refugee in 2016 occurred on just January 3rd (3/1/16) when an infant child drowned in the Aegean in scenes that were every bit as harrowing as Aylan Kurdi. With another 47 drowning in a single sinking just on Tuesday (5/1/15) the monthly death toll is already close to exceeding 100.

Just today 14 refugees have been killed in road accidents in Turkey. That is a clear sign that Turkey isn't even attempting to stop the refugees reaching the coast.

I've long said that rather than rewarding Turkey for all the refugees it keeps sending us the EU should be fining it USD100,000 for every Muslim it sends to drown at sea. That penalty can be paid directly or through visa fees and custom duties.

Perhaps more alarmingly then that on December 4th (4/12/15) Germany voted to deploy its military in a non-combat role to support the fight against ISIL. Due to the diplomatic efforts to keep Turkey onside over the refugee issue Germany has made the mistake of deploy those military assets to Turkey. This of course increases Turkey's influence over the anti-ISIL coalition.

This is a problem because Turkey is one of the main supporters of ISIL and one of the main obstacles to defeating. Since the liberation of the Tishan Dam on December 26th (26/12/15) Turkey is now extremely concerned about the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) advancing on what the Turkish Justice & Development Party (AKP) are openly referring to as; "The ISIL safe-zone."

Despite all these dangerous and counter-productive concessions to Turkey and with Hungary's objections to an EU-wide refugee policy tied up in the courts the crisis doesn't look like it is going to be solved any time soon. 

As a result many EU nations are suspending the Schengen agreement and following Hungary's lead by throwing up border controls threatening what Chancellor Merkel considers one of the core elements of the EU.

Quite how we get the situation back on track is still rather beyond me. However I think it would help if Chancellor Merkel produced that rarest of things from a politician; An apology and an admission that they made a mistake.

22:10 on 9/1/16 (UK date).