Translated material
One -way van
In early autumn 2015, Europe resembles a huge refugee camp. Key transit points - Greece, Italy and Hungary. How do migrants from the Middle and Middle East and Africa fall on the continent, which, in the literal sense, pay for this price - the New Times found out
The children of refugees from Afghanistan who did not have enough space in the center of accommodation are sleeping right on the street, Athens, August 2015
In multi -colored tents, smiling people live on one of the outskirts of Athens - Afghans, the second largest migrant diaspora after Syrian. They survived the Taliban, and on the way here, to Europe, there were clashes with the forces of law and order in Iran and Turkey. “I have already spent almost $ 6 thousand, but nothing is the most difficult behind,” the 40-year-old Hamid, a former resident of Kabul, sighs. He and his fellow tribesmen traveled a long way - they walked on foot, rode on horses, on buses, and trains - through mountains, caves and along rivers.
The ways of salvation in 2014 at the hands of the militants of the Islamic State* (IG) and the Taliban died 10 thousand Afghans. The same number of refugees from Afghanistan, according to the UN, has arrived in Europe over the past two months. For crossing each border on its way, each of them paid a thousand euros. “The first thousand is in Iranian Mashhead for asylum in Tehran,” says another refugee named Nassim. - There, in Mashhead, - a thousand Iranian and another thousand Turkish smugglers. Get from Turkey to Hungary or Greece - 6 thousand are obtained on the circle. ” At the same time, Nassim does not condemn the smugglers: "They are our only chance"
Preparing his family's escape to Europe, Nassim worked in Dubai for five years. He is not going to linger in Greece. His coveted dream is Germany, which for some reason is called among migrants in the French manner: Allemagne ... I'm going to Allemagne. The country of Angels Merkel is a synonym for all Northern Europe for them, and even those who seek to get to Scandinavia or the Netherlands will say to you: "I'm going to Germany."
However, in this dramatic story about the mass resettlement of living souls, each ethnic group has its own price ...
Migrants from Syria at first go to Turkey - directly or through Egypt. From the Turkish coast - an hour by sea to the Greek Islands Lesbos or Kos. This is the shortest part of the path costs € 2 thousand. And then everything is noticeably simplified: the Greek government, despite the crisis, rents large vessels to deliver migrants to Athens. There they begin to seek shipment to Germany or go through thessalonics to Macedonia - they rent trucks, climb into wrappers, hiding under the goods. When the money ends, they go on foot. Sometimes truckers show sympathy and take them for free. Some Bulgarians and Albanians organize impromptu “tourist companies” and sell “tours” to central Europe for € 1 thousand per person. The owners of one of these “tourist companies” hired a sausage truck in which 71 people suffocated - a story that shocked all of Europe. The "tour operators" threw a truck on the sidelines of the Austrian A4 A4 A4, on the border with Hungary, and fled. Prior to this, the Hungarian police detained two Serbs, who tried to illegally remove more than 30 people from the country, and the 34-year-old Russian Timur R.-he wanted to transport four Syrians to Austria.
The most desperate situation, even worse than in Syria’s war, developed in Libya - here, according to the special services, the most brutal jihadists from all over Africa come together. In Syria, IG* in the captured territories established at least some system of power. Libya is divided between tribal clans, among which is now the strongest - the Sudanese clan, it is he who controls the migration business. “Sudanists” themselves buy boats and longboats, which then rent out for the migrants, or charge interest from the income of professional smugglers. The funds obtained in this way then go to finance terrorism. The military base of the Libyan "Sudintsev" is located in the city of Tobruk. “If the Italian fleet wants to attack us or stop our boat, we will find what to answer,” Mustafa boasts in a conversation with NT correspondent for Skype. - We have Russian “MiGs”, French “Mirages”, Czech Dolphins. In a word, a complete set from the former Arsenal Gaddafi.
For a trip from Libya to the shores of Italy or Greece, each migrant must pay $ 2 thousand. They are most often transported under the guise of local fishermen. The most dark -skinned Africans, too obvious immigrants from equatorial Africa, are hidden deeper, in the hold, so that the crews of the vessels with which the migrant barcap will encounter the sea, not transferred about it by a walkie -talkie by Italian or Greek coastal protection, which has an order: ships with migrants to deploy back. Those who are in the hold and die more often. A brighter Arabs travel on deck. But both are the hostages of the elements. On August 27, 200 migrants died off the coast of Tripoli. Father with two children paid $ 3600 for "tickets" before Greece and 35 more dinars for a life jacket. Father survived. His children drowned with the ship.
Zerit, a refugee from Eritrea, who survived after a shipwreck near the island of Lampeduz, who had taken 300 migrants who had taken away their lives last year, told the author of these lines that every gang of smugglers in Africa has its own propagandists: “They themselves go out to people, say how to easily and cheaply get to Europe by the sea. They convince us to leave. They never say how many people have already drowned at sea. And when we are already in their hands, they force our relatives to pay extra - otherwise, they say, we will kill everyone. ”
Today, V. has another business - he is one of those who control the “Balkan path”, along which all the Egyptians, Palestinians and Turks, trying to get through Macedonia and Serbia to Hungary and Greece, into the “Schengen paradise”. V. regularly runs between Greece and North Africa. “I help people,” he says to himself. He was laundering his capital by buying houses and shops in the Nile Valley. A migrant in search of a ship, on which you can cross the Mediterranean Sea, will certainly find it. “With the advent of summer, a stream of people who want to sail to Europe is growing, my phone is torn from calls, there are not enough places for everyone,” says V., who already has “representative offices” in Greece, Turkey and Egypt.
For crossing on the route, Turkey - Greece V. takes € 5 thousand per person: “This is not as cheap as to leave Libya, but there people behave like animals - they still swim, what to swim, where ...”
At each batch of refugees, V. earns € 100-150 thousand minus costs - payments to those who directly help migrants to move from one shore to another - stalkers, sailors, etc.
“I can do everything. If a person has money, I can make a Greek or Italian passport for him, ”V. without blinking, for whom the Arab Spring, which turned to the power of Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia, as in Libya and Yemen, became a real semoline. Not to mention the IG*, whose military successes in the last year and a half forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis to leave their native houses. The wider the territory under the control of IG*, the faster the earnings of V.
Another “ruler of souls” is also known in the Balkans and in Italy - Eremias Hermay, a native of Ethiopia, a dollar multimillionaire. Eremias speaks the languages of Tigrini and Oroo and buys migrants in “parties according to a hundred pieces” from other people's merchants. He assigns a number for each batch, after which he equips the “load” of each boat, which sets on the road through the Mediterranean Sea.
Eremias has been engaged in this business for four years, but so far no one has seen even his photographs - there is only a photobot compiled according to the descriptions of his “customers”. The Eritrean Zerit, who personally met with Eremias, says that the first thing they were selected from everyone to take mobile phones so that, God forbid, someone would not take a picture of the “boss”.
Eremias takes $ 2 thousand from each migrant for transportation from Tripoli to Sicily - each barcare brings him about $ 80 thousand. In addition, he earns on the transportation of migrants from Rome to Northern Europe - takes € 400–800 from a person. At the same time, he even gives them his phone number in Libya. Eremias calls himself an entrepreneur and keeps his money in Frankfurt-on-Main and Stockholm, where his wife Mana Ibrahim lives.
€ 4 thousand a month arrested by the Italian police, Ethiopus, Nurenin Vehabredi Atta worked for a sealant. From the testimony of Atta it follows that his boss personally spent quite a bit, about 5 % of the funds earned on smuggling by people, everything else was sent to relatives to Europe through the Islamic informal financial and settlement system “Havla”. According to Atta, "in Europe, Eremias has billions."
A niche for enterprising in general in the field of migration every entrepreneurial person will find his niche. Especially a lot of money is spinning at the “highest level” - in the European Union. For example, Italy has just received € 500 million from the EU executive structures for receiving, placing and arranging migrants. In addition, € 89 million was allocated for the operation "Poseidon" to save migrants in the sea. The United Kingdom, which accepts the smallest migrants, received € 370 million. The total amount of allocations for all countries affected by the migration crisis reaches € 7 billion. But this is the tip of the iceberg. And there is also an underwater part.
The centers of the placement of migrants remaining in Italy are often financed according to the "gray schemes". Recently, a scandal erupted in Sicily: it turned out that the local mafia got a contract management contract in the amount of almost € 100 million. Each migrant “for life” - food and housing - is allocated € 36.4 per day. But this money is often puffed out by not too scrupulous entrepreneurs who settle refugees literally in the stable, and take the difference to themselves.
In Budapest, where 3 thousand migrants arrive daily, the “Banking Business” roots have taken: local businessmen use the fact that many visitors do not have any documents at all and therefore they cannot get money in the bank that relatives from Germany, Austria and other countries transfer them. “Bankers” offer refugees a service: money from relatives comes to their accounts - for a 30% rollback. There were also Kidali - "carriers". One 17-year-old Syrian paid them € 5 thousand. For the transfer to relatives to Germany, but at the last moment she was told that there was no place for her in the car and the departure was delayed a little ... After which the scammers disappeared along with the money.
However, a completely official business is in a hurry to earn money on refugees. For example, telephone companies: Vodafone agents who arrived in Greece offer cards with a special tariff for calls to Syria - € 10 for 80 minutes of conversation.
“In recent decades, European countries needed migrants as cheap labor - this helped reduce the cost of production,” says an expert from Colombian University (USA) Sakia Sassen. “But now the situation is different: migrants do not come for a better life, their goal is just to survive.”
Migrants storm trains to Austria and Germany, Budapest, Keleti station, September 3, 2015
The East is a dark business all migrants with whom I had a chance to talk in Greece and Italy - Afghans, Syrians, Libyans - do not want to stay on the EU southern flank: "Here people live well." But even less they would like to be in eastern Europe for a long time. “I was offered to go to Poland,” said Afghan Hamid. “But I know that all Slavs are racists.” Usually, the migrant knows only what another migrant told him, albeit partially and a spoiled phone.
Hamid wants the same as everyone else - a calm life, housing and pocket money. In Northern Europe, all this is guaranteed, in the eastern - no. Can Russia be attracted to Russia? Hamid says that he knows one Syrian whose brother sent his family from Aleppo to Sochi, from where she traveled a path of several thousand kilometers to the north, to the Kola Peninsula, to the border with Norway. According to Hamid, no more than 20 people per month use this route, and it costs € 10 thousand, but, according to rumors, 133 Syrians already managed to get into Norwegian Kirkenes like this. Nobody wished to stay in Russia.
"Russia? Yes, you, who will go there to live there, hate people of another race there, ”Eritrean Zerit is convinced. But he adds immediately: “Although ... if Europe closes its borders, and the Russians, on the contrary, will open - how to know.”
* Islamic state - an organization prohibited in Russia
Photo: Michela Yakkarino, Reuters/Bernadett Szabo
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OPINION**
Karmino Mortero Martinez,
Expert of the European Reform Center in Brussels:“The European Union will not close the doors for migrants, we are not Australia and will not be able to do this, especially given the functional and legal consequences of such a step. But to open them wide open is also not a solution to the crisis. In its overcoming, Russia could play a role. But this is not about “distracting” part of the migrants who could not get to the EU. Moscow should help, first of all, with the decision of the military conflict in Syria. ”