Ajar walks in circles in the courtyard of a homeless shelter in the center of Bialystok, a Polish town 50 kilometers away of Belarus. “You have to go to the border, terrible things are happening there. A lot of people are in pain and need help. You have to help them! “, begs this 36-year-old Syrian Kurd. Neat clothes and a meticulously trimmed square beard, he made a series of cigarettes and phone calls.
With his wife and two children aged 5 and 10, they are aware of being one of the lucky ones: the tiny minority of migrants who have managed to slip through the cracks of a border that some Arab social networks start to describe as ” more difficult ” than the way through the Mediterranean.
Since the regime of Alexander Lukashenko organized, in the middle of the summer, a network for the transfer of migrants from the Middle East and Africa via Minsk, the Belarusian capital, the migratory pressure on the Polish and Lithuanian borders has not ceased. to grow. The two countries, as well as the European authorities, are talking about “Hybrid war” carried out against the European Union (EU).
“We are aware of being pawns in a political war. But we prefer this war, between two countries, to a real war, between bullets ”, Ajar sighs. This trader, a former professor of psychology at the University of Aleppo (Syria), perfectly English-speaking, left Kameshli three weeks earlier, on the Turkish-Syrian border. Social networks were then full of proposals to join the EU via Belarus. The trip to Minsk will have cost him, through an agency, 4,000 US dollars (3,450 euros) per person.
His flight from Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, via Dubai (United Arab Emirates) was full “95%” of people in his situation. “Once we arrived in Minsk, we were picked up and placed in a hotel. A thirteen-story building, almost full. ” All then reached the border by taxi.
Illegal refoulements
After three days of wandering with his family, he decided to call in Belarusian smugglers. “In a military-type truck, they took us to a river, where they took us by boat. “ Follows a walk of more than ten hours, through swamps, with the help of the GPS locator of his phone.
“The forest is full of men, families, children. Some spend more than two weeks there, without a reserve of water or food. The Belarusian guards force them to cross the border then the Poles push them back. They are stuck. “ Temperatures at night are now around 0 ° C, and few migrants were ready to face the immense forests of Podlasie, as thick as they are humid, where the sun is rare and the sky is heavy.
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