THE scenes are already depressingly familiar. The crammed dinghies on the open seas. The wet, cold, terrified families often with babes in arms, wading ashore only to find their journey blocked again by barbed wire fences and tear gas-firing border guards.
Most of those now on the move are the same human flotsam from the world’s frontlines where conflicts have raged for years. “Fortress Europe,” it would seem is once again on the brink of another refugee crisis just like the one it faced back in 2015.
I, for one ,will never forget those terrible months back then when I covered that exodus. I defy any thinking, caring, person not to have been profoundly moved and affected had they been there to witness the plight and hear the harrowing stories of those mainly Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan families who struggled ashore on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Kos.
Almost all had experienced suffering and hardship most of us fortunately will never encounter and can scarcely imagine. What if it were my family and me I kept asking myself?
What must it be like to be totally uprooted through no fault of your own and cast adrift at the mercy of every conceivable predatory group and individual?
I still recall the haunted looks on the faces of those landing on the beaches, often at night and having for months previously been bombed, shot at and starved.
On the Turkish coast, so close to what they thought was the sanctuary of Europe, unscrupulous Turkish criminal gangs of people smugglers would think nothing of taking the last of the refugees’ money for fake “lifejackets” filled with bubble wrap that would waterlog and lead to near-certain downing, before casting them out into the daunting night time darkness of the Aegean Sea.
Faced with this swelling tide of humanity Europe often found itself seriously wanting back in 2015, when more than a million people came looking for safety.
The acrimony that resulted from the failure of the European Union to have a cohesive and comprehensive humanitarian strategy caused lasting divisions between and within the bloc.
I fear that this time things will be even worse, especially for those most vulnerable and at risk.
At least, for what it’s worth, back in 2015 those criminals and politicians who saw refugees as nothing more than human collateral and bargaining chips did their best to disguise the mercenarism that underpinned their motives.
The same most certainly cannot be said of them now. There is something utterly repugnant in the way a cynical autocrat like Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has weaponised Syrian refugees as a tool in both his domestic and foreign policies.
The problem with Erdogan is he always wants things both ways. Right now he is doing all he can to turn the screw on the EU by pushing yet more of the four million mainly Syrian and Iraqi refugees toward Europe.
His moves sit totally at odds with the deal that Turkey and the EU made back in 2016, when the Turkish leader – in return for lots of European cash – promised to prevent refugees from crossing to Greece and to take back any who did. But all that has changed, with Erdogan now acting on his threat to open his country’s floodgates if Europe slowed Turkey accession talks or failed to implement visa-free travel.
Actually when I come to think of it, this is not the only sign these days of a wayward Erdogan. Although Turkey is nominally a Nato ally and an applicant to join the EU, more and more it displays all the hallmarks of becoming a geopolitical threat to the very organisations it never tires of wanting to be a member of.
In other words, with arm-twisting friends like Turkey, who needs enemies. Were it left to Erdogan, Europe would also find itself much more embroiled in Syria’s war.
But in fairness to the Turkish leader, Europe never really came close to upholding its end of the bargain either and seemed oblivious to fact that it was over-promising.
Neither did the EU prepare for the inevitable rekindling of the refugee crisis emanating from the Middle East. Did the bloc really think it could sweep such a problem out of plain sight?
The brutal scenes we have seen unfolding this week along Greece’s northern border with Turkey and the Bulgarian-Turkish frontier were foreseeable in every way.
They are proof, too, of the EU’s failure these past five years to devise a common policy to manage the inevitable uptick in refugees that was sure to come at some point from Syria’s unfinished war and others beyond.
So where then, you might ask, does all this now leave the EU and who are the real winners and losers likely to be from this latest refugee crisis?
Well, to begin with, the time has definitely come for Europe to decide where it stands regarding its reputation for humanitarianism.
If the barriers, bullets and border controls prevail viciously and unthinkingly, then that reputation at best hangs in the balance and at worst could be forfeited completely.
Sadly, either way, you can be sure the real winners will most likely be those cynical politicians who see in suffering the opportunity to enhance their own position or geopolitical leverage at whatever human cost.
Then there are those of the far-right for whom the prospect of another “refugee crisis” such as in 2015 is a gift to their more lurid racist populist propaganda.
They will not fail to portray what is happening now as yet another “invasion” of “alien cultures” and proof of a “clash of civilisations.”
As for the losers in all of this, you will find them, as ever, huddled in the hell of places like Greece’s Moria refugee camp, originally designed for 3000 people but now housing almost seven times that number.
As compassionate and caring Europeans, we must not fall for the lies of the right who would have us turn a blind eye to such places and remain quiet.
As one volunteer doctor in Moria camp observed the other day: “The only thing worse than the policies designed to strangle the survivors of some of the world’s worst conflicts, is the overwhelming apathy of the silent majority.”
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