OhOn a dark forest road last month, Polish police were hunting for a speeding car that jumped over a checkpoint.The driver of this car is a human smuggler, and his passengers are three Syrians. They paid thousands of dollars for him to take them to Germany. This is their journey from the Middle East. BelarusA truck coming from the opposite direction tried to avoid them, but was unable to avoid it. Ferhad Nabo, 33, the married father of two children from Kobani, died on the spot in the crash.
“He left Syria like many others and went to Europe,” said his cousin, Syrian humanitarian worker Rashwan Nabo. Verhad boarded a direct flight from Erbil in northern Iraq to Minsk. “In Raqqa, Damascus and Afghanistan. In Lepo, there has been news for months that the easiest and fastest way to reach Europe is to fly directly to Belarus,” said his cousin.
Ferhad Nabo is one of at least nine people who have died since the beginning of the epidemic. Border standoff between Poland and BelarusThe President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has been accused of deliberately provoking a new refugee crisis in Europe by organizing the movement of people from the Middle East in retaliation for EU sanctions against its dictatorship.
Thousands of Iraqi Kurdish and Syrian families live in small tents hidden in the bushes between the two countries, where the night temperature is below zero, and many more are preparing to try dangerous journeys outside the door every day Queuing agency, while Nabo’s family is waiting for his body to be removed from Poland.
At first, it was just a trickle: a few people had heard of a new way to enter the euro zone without a Schengen visa. “In the beginning, there were not many people because they were suspicious,” said a travel agency in southern Beirut that serves Syrians trying to reach Belarus. “It was in April. But then many people arrived in good places in Europe and business started to improve.”
In northern Kurdish Iraq, The timeline is similar. “Before the summer, we got instructions from an agent in Baghdad to issue visas from Belarus,” said an agent in Erbil. “It didn’t take long for the news to spread, but the last two months have been really busy.”
In these two cities, the process and prices are similar. Iraqis who want to travel need to pay US$3,500 (£2,600) each in cash, most of which is used to cover visa fees.
In the recent visa boom, with the help of the Syrian Embassy in Beirut, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Syrians have applied in Lebanon. Abu Fahid, a builder on the outskirts of Damascus who has lived in Beirut for five years, said: “It’s time to leave. This is the opportunity I have been waiting for. Do you think I will stay in Lebanon now? It is worse than Syria.”
Successful applicants crossed the land border to return to Syria, and then drove to Damascus for a flight: some transited to Belarusian Airlines in Istanbul, while others flew directly to Minsk via Syrian Airlines. Last month, Minsk International Airport released a new winter timetable, increasing the number of flights from the Middle East to 55 per week.
“I know that passing Belarus is too risky,” said Dlovan, a 27-year-old unemployed man from Duhok, Kurdistan, Iraq. “But if God wants, I will go anyway.”
The Kurdish leaders were shocked by the recent flight, and they said they could not stop it. But after desperate scenes in the eastern fringe of the European Union, officials said they are now seeking ways to intervene.
A senior official of the Kurdish regional government said: “We are investigating travel agencies. This is clearly a dangerous political game in Belarus disguised as a regular tourist visa issuance.” “This is direct human trafficking, using vulnerable families as cannon fodder to strengthen Belarus’s presence. Influence in internal disputes in Europe.”
The Guardian interviewed dozens of asylum applicants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in the Polish city of Bialystok, who recently managed to cross the border from Belarus. All confirmed that they arrived by purchasing packages provided to them by travel agencies. According to the asylum seekers, these packages appear to be in close contact with the Belarusian authorities.
“These travel agencies are 100% connected to Belarusians,” said Aras Palani, a 50-year-old Iraqi interpreter. Palani talked to hundreds of people and they said they had purchased a travel package, which included a one-way flight, visa and two days of hotel accommodation. “them [the travel agents] Tell people that they are in contact with border police and that crossing the border is easy. But these are all lies. “
Anna Orbos of the National Minority Rights Organization said: “I met some families who were told by travel agencies that the border between Minsk and Poland would take about three hours to walk.” Minsk is about 200 miles from the border.
Belavia, the state-owned airline of Belarus, which previously denied involvement in human trafficking, stated that it cannot “specify the name of the travel agency because we cannot be 100% sure that these travel agencies are consciously involved in trafficking in migrants”.
Once the migrants reach the Belarusian capital, the smugglers will start to act. Ahmed, 29, a law student in Syria, talked about the phone numbers of smugglers on his Facebook page who asked immigrants to get in touch with Belarusian drivers. “They picked me up at the Planeta Hotel in Minsk,” Ahmed said. “From there, they spent about $100 to take us to the barbed wire fence at the border.”
It is at that moment that the journey usually turns into a nightmare. The migrants told the Guardian how the Belarusian army gathered groups of up to 50 people and then used scissors to cut the barbed wire and let them pass through.
On the other hand, nearly 20,000 Polish border police were deployed on both sides of the army to demonstrate the unknown force of the country since the end of the Cold War. Hundreds of people were violently pushed back to Belarus, some of them tried to cross the border many times. Whether they can pass safely in the end is a question of luck.
Although Turkish and Belarusian Airlines have promised to stop the flow, the crisis seems far from over. Thousands of people remain in Belarus, and thousands more are eager to join them.
“People will never stop looking for other ways to reach Europe,” Rushwan said. “Blocking the border with barbed wire did not stop my cousin Verhard and others who flee war and poverty like him. People will never stop looking for other ways to reach Europe.”
Additional reporting by Nechirvan Mando in Erbil, Safi Shdeed in Beirut, and Marta Bellingreri in Catania.
