Middle East

As tragedies shock Europe, a bigger refugee crisis looms in the Middle East

While the world’s attention is fixed on the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees swarming into Europe, a potentially far more profound crisis is unfolding in the countries of the Middle East that have borne the brunt of the world’s failure to resolve the Syrian war.

Those reaching Europe represent a small percentage of the 4 million Syrians who have fled into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, making Syria thebiggest single source of refugees in the world and the worst humanitarian emergency in more than four decades.