Introduction to translation
In her article published in "The Atlantic", American journalist Anne Applebaum discusses the tragedy of the thousands of Arab refugees who are now standing on the border separating Belarus and Poland, waiting to cross the gates of Europe. Will these migrants succeed in reaching the land of dreams?
Or will they eventually ignite a regional conflict on the old continent?
translation text
The Kurdish boy was crying on the wet Polish forest floor, a few kilometers from the eastern border with Belarus, the air around him thick with cold and fog. In a circle around him, his parents, uncles and cousins, who came from the same village near the city of "Dohuk" in Iraqi Kurdistan, numbered 16 people, including seven children, one of whom was a baby born four months ago, as well as an old woman who can barely walk. None of them speak Polish or English, but Anwar, a relative of the boy, does speak Arabic, and he told us through an interpreter that his family has been in the woods and has been going back and forth between Poland and Belarus two weeks ago. None of them had eaten for the past two days.
In another circle, the boy and his family were surrounded by a number of people with cameras; The Polish, the Swedish, the Slovenian, the German, the Japanese, the American, and I was one of them. This exact site was sent to us a few days ago by Grupa Granica, a Polish volunteer organization set up two months ago to help migrants, whose name in Polish simply means "border group". The spokesperson for Grupa Granica sent us text messages with the coordinates of that family's location; Because they wanted as many journalists as possible to document the moment Anwar would ask the Polish border guards for asylum, holding a banner in English, leaving the task of translating it into Polish to Jacob Spianski, also a member of Grupa Granica.Sbyanski said that the presence of the media would make it difficult for the Polish border guards to ignore Anwar's request and force him to return with the rest of his family to the forest, just as he had done with others over the past weeks.
Visa to the unknown
Lukashenko's brutality is even more severe. The man is in power thanks to violence only, as he has used it to suppress the huge and complex democratic opposition.
Strange is the series of events that brought that particular boy to this particular forest, as many tragic incidents accumulated to create favorable conditions for such a situation, including the wars in Iraq and Syria, the rise of terrorism, and the failure of democracy in Belarus.
Even stranger is the fact that the boy’s fate will be determined according to the political calculations of two people he will never meet, whose names he absolutely does not know: “Alexander Lukashenko,” the dictator of Belarus, and “Jaroslaw Kaczynski,” the head of Poland’s ruling party and the country’s de facto leader who dictates to its president and prime minister what they do.
However, Lukashenko's brutality is even more severe. The man is in power thanks to violence only, as he has used it to suppress the huge and complex democratic opposition, putting more than 800 political prisoners behind the bars of his prisons, many of whom have been beaten or tortured, in addition to the emigration of thousands more abroad. . Both the European Union and the United States have imposed sanctions on his regime for these crimes, and he is now seeking revenge. Last summer, Lukashenko launched a state-sponsored people-smuggling program designed not only to deceive people in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere into how easily they could get into the European Union through Minsk, but also to take their money at the same time.
For example, Anwar said, his family traveled by bus from Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, to Istanbul, Turkey, where they purchased visas to travel to Belarus and airline tickets to Minsk, in order to eventually reach the Polish border. Although Anwar did not tell me the amount he paid, others incurred expenses that would be considered a sum in the Middle East. A recently produced short documentary, Visa to Nowhere, contains an interview with a Syrian citizen who was living in a refugee camp in Lebanon before he planned to travel to Europe via Belarus. The man paid $6000 for the entire trip, convinced that it was worth it. And that it is a low price for the "dignified life" that he wants. The man had messaged people on Facebook who had made their journey, telling him it was easy, as they "suffered for a few days and then made their way through Poland".Moreover, some of the escorts also broadcast a video recording of the agent of a tourism company in Beirut telling them that the visa alone costs $1,300, money that supposedly goes to the Belarusian government.
Migrants stay in hotels as soon as they arrive in Minsk, and also pay for their stay there, although they sometimes sleep at the airport, and videos posted on social media showed crowds of them in large groups in the city center of Minsk, and residents circulate stories of migrants buying long shoes from Rubber and winter clothing. Then, bleak events follow. Some pay to be taken to the border (Anwar said that the cost of each fully loaded car is $300), while others recounted being escorted by men in uniform, most likely border guards. When they reach the border fence, migrants are ordered to cross it - illegally - trucks drive them along the border, and Belarusian border guards help them find empty spots where it is easy to slip to the other side.Anwar told us that the border guards used wire shears to cut the border fence and let his family pass, while others were given wire shears and told to cut the fence themselves.
The migrants have no choice, then, once they reach that point. They are not allowed to come forward to cross the official border checkpoints to claim asylum, although some have already requested it, and they are not allowed to return to Minsk, even if they beg for the opportunity to return home. Belarusian border guards raise pistols in their faces, telling them they have no alternative, and then their march to the West begins.
People smuggling game
Last night Belarusian soldiers tried to destroy a Polish border fence near Czeremcha (115km south of Kuznica).
Some of them were blinding Polish soldiers with stroboscopes and lasers while the others were ripping out fence posts and tearing down concertina wire using a vehicle.
pic.twitter.com/qy4nBMKEGP
— Tadeusz Giczan (@TadeuszGiczan) November 13, 2021
This human smuggling project started on Belarus' border with Lithuania, a member of the European Union. The number of immigrants was small at first, but soon the Belarusian border guards moved people to the border with Latvia, and then to the border with Poland. Now, with thousands arriving in Minsk from the Middle East each week, the situation is changing again, as Belarusian border guards mobilize hundreds of migrants together and orchestrate a mass assault on the border near the Polish town of Kuźnica. The Belarusian border guards were given canisters of tear gas to use against the Polish border guards, and they also used laser lights and flashing lights (or strobe lamps as they are sometimes known) so that the Poles could not see what was going on, and Polish police officers and soldiers still crowded along the border until now.
Lukashenko's tactic is a diabolical cynic, weaponizing human desperation, luring people onto a dangerous and perilous journey, taking their money, and forcing them to break the law. On the Polish side, Kaczynski's policies are also belittled, albeit in a different way. The leader of the Polish "PiS" party wants to remain in power like Lukashenko, but because his country is so far a democracy, the man needs popular support. Kaczynski has lobbied for public support in the past using fear, anxiety and xenophobia. During the previous refugee crisis in Europe in 2015, the man warned that Syrian refugees were carrying parasites and that they would use churches as latrines.
From this narrow perspective, the current migrant crisis is beneficial for Kaczynski. In the midst of rising cases of COVID-19, soaring inflation and rampant corruption, Kaczynski can now turn the subject around to the threat of an invasion of Poland by disease-laden Muslims, and how he alone can to solve that problem.
Last August, the Polish government announced a "push back" policy to return anyone illegally in Poland to the other side of the border (with Belarus).
In September, the government declared a state of emergency in the border areas, set up checkpoints there, and denied entry to journalists and humanitarian organizations in the restricted area.
Simultaneously with all this, Kaczynski has refused any help from the European Union, apparently insisting on maintaining the narrative that only he can solve the crisis.
Jaroslav Kaczynski
The European Union has learned a lot since 2015, its Warsaw-based border agency, Frontex, which can come to the aid of the Polish border guards (if they want it). The EU Commissioner for Home Affairs has told me that resources from the European Asylum Support Agency and other emergency funding packages are available if requested by the Polish government, but that the Polish government refuses any of that so far, while Lithuania and Latvia have received it. In domestic politics, Kaczynski's bet may work. The rhetoric of war, invasion, and militarized conflict, now frequently used on state television, already appears to be boosting his support numbers in opinion polls, which have recently plummeted.
On the ground, that policy has created legal, humanitarian and moral chaos, as migrants who are “pushed back” to the Belarusian border do not cross it, do not return to Minsk, and do not board planes home, all of which is impossible for them. Instead, the migrants try to cross the border twenty-two times, and while the Polish border guards periodically announce how many people have been stopped, in fact the same people are caught over and over again.
However, inefficiency matches the chaos in this crisis. The "pay-back" policy has failed disastrously. As for Lukashenko, he was not deterred. On the contrary, the rhetoric of "hybrid war" issued by Poland encouraged him to search for new ways to lure the Polish border guards and then build up a larger number of Belarusian forces, as if a war actually imposed their need. In addition, Poland's border with Belarus is long, the resources of the Polish army and police are limited, and migrants have a great incentive to make their way into the European Union; They fear death on the border if they do not cross it.
A taxi driver in Warsaw told me that he was asked if he was willing to enter the lucrative business of transporting people across Poland from the Belarusian border to the German border, and that he refused, but that others apparently made the opposite decision.
Police in Germany have restricted entry to about 9,000 people from Belarus, almost all of them, over the past two months.
People who have arrived in Germany brag about the success of their endeavor on social media, which encourages more immigrants to come.
The humanitarian is fighting the political
A different kind of chaos has descended on the Polish borderland. The Białowiea National Park, which contains the only remaining primeval forest in Europe, usually attracts bird-watchers, photographers and artists, makes the situation very paradoxical.
Katajina Wappa lives in the famous and picturesque town of Hainovka adjacent to the park, and now she has to cross checkpoints and show her ID to be able to visit her grandmother. Most of them were filled with soldiers, while the stadium turned into a gathering for their tents. Official government policy in Poland is that no one is allowed through, so there is nothing to be done (to solve the problem). In fact, everyone here has encountered lost and hungry people from different countries - from Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon - as they struggle through the fields and gardens of the inhabitants, and hide behind trees, sometimes they become weak and unable to walk, or become frightened and refuse to ask for help. What should residents do then?
Katajina told me that she found it impossible to stand still: “If I knew that someone was dying outside my wall, in my garden, in my town, I had no choice. I could not allow a person to die of hunger, thirst, or cold And he is right by my side, it is not normal for saving the lives of others to become a crime." Katajina is one of many local residents who have organized temporary stores to store food, water bottles, winter clothes and cell phone batteries in garages and unused rooms of their homes. Together with Grupa Granica and volunteers from all over Poland, they created a surprisingly efficient roaming system, where their phone numbers are distributed on Arabic social media pages, then passed on to groups of migrants, and when someone feels despondent, they call them, and volunteers respond by carrying blankets, shoes and soup-filled water bottles to the the forest.Some of the more experienced organisations, such as the Polish Red Cross and Poland's famous charity The Great Christmas Orchestra (WOŚP), have launched a formal system for collecting donations from all over the country, while the state and international organizations remain absent, and the scene is dominated by newbies trekking into the woods. To lend a hand and face these difficult legal, ethical, and medical choices.
Polish government policy has created a vacuum that volunteers have been forced to fill, and Grupa Granica now organizes press conferences and communicates with dozens of international journalists, but like others it is filled with staff who have never faced a similar crisis.
For example, Evo Luch, the official press spokesman for the organization, is studying for a Ph.D. in sociology, and has postponed all his work, including delivering the thesis, in order to take on assignments that turned into a full-time job.
The translator, Sibyansky, is also on the cusp of completing his doctorate in medieval history. He is an expert on relations between the Arab world and Byzantium, but has spent the past month in the border region rather than completing his studies.
Snows of death or fires of war?
None of this means that there is a clear and easy solution to the crisis. The truth is that there is no solution. Neither Poland nor the rest of Europe can open its borders to millions who want to travel, and neither Warsaw nor Brussels can succumb to the blackmail of Minsk. The Polish government has the full right to defend its borders, especially since the situation of people who have succeeded in crossing its borders is suspicious, they have already broken the law and destroyed the border fence, and although some of them have good reasons for obtaining political asylum, many are not qualified for that, but want to go To Germany to live with their families there, because they believe they can get a job, and because the specter of spending ten years in a refugee camp in Lebanon or Turkey is abhorrent.In any case, it is assumed that asylum should be sought from the first country in which you set foot and feel safe, and therefore some believe that asylum should be sought in Minsk, although this is difficult as migrants are taken directly to the border by bus upon arrival in Belarus.
But the link in the catastrophic behavior of the Polish government lies precisely in the fact that Lukashenko is a tyrant who underestimates what is around him, using human beings as weapons, and that his plan is designed to undermine democratic values. Therefore, democratic countries must crystallize a reaction to this type of provocation based on the rule of law, transparency and humanity. Sending people repeatedly to where they are at risk, knowing that they may die, is immoral, as well as a violation of international law. Pretending that this is a "hybrid war", and not a humanitarian crisis at the same time, is a gross misunderstanding of what is happening on the ground.
Part of the solution is to crystallize a united international response. European pressure has persuaded Iraqi Airways to stop flights from Baghdad to Minsk, and Turkish Airlines has stated that it will not sell one-way tickets from the Middle East to Minsk. Perhaps another important part of solving the problem is to speed up and expand the procedures for legal consideration of the status of immigrants. Indeed, the cases of many of those who arrived in Germany will be examined, and those who do not qualify for asylum will be returned to their homes. These procedures usually take two months, which seems a long time to compare with similar procedures that may take a few years at the US-Mexico border. But what if we could elaborate a special emergency system that would further speed up that process? At that time, those deserving of asylum or those worthy of special care will remain, and the rest will leave, and perhaps the sight of huge planes carrying them to Erbil from Warsaw discourages others from coming.
We don't have much time. If the situation does not change quickly, we may witness a catastrophic situation on a larger scale. Videos of Belarusian soldiers shooting into the air near the border are already circulating online, so what if they started shooting it right across the border? The Russian forces, in turn, appear to be training alongside their Belarusian counterparts near the Lithuanian border, so what if their paths deviated and descended into border towns inside Poland to protect their Belarusian allies? Even if we avoid a direct collision, a sharp shift in weather may create a crisis of a different kind. It could snow in Poland in late November and December, just as it did last year, and if that scenario happens, hundreds will freeze. And perhaps thousands to death.
I started my article by talking about the Kurdish boy for a good reason, so I will end my article by referring to him as well. The truth is that everyone who has an interest in prolonging the crisis, exploiting it, or profiting politically through it, does not want you to see that boy, but rather they want you to see crowds. She was dehumanized without faces or names, and to see waves of people and unknown immigrants who allowed themselves to be bullets in a hybrid war.
But a collective tragedy is but a series of individual tragedies, and we should remember that well as soon as we see one unfold before our very eyes.
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Translation: Noor Khairy
This report has been translated from The Atlantic and does not necessarily reflect the website of Meydan.