Background of the migrant crisis: Travel arrangements leading to "Hybrid Warfare"

Background of the migrant crisis: Travel arrangements leading to "Hybrid Warfare"

The anger of the regime in Belarus due to European sanctions has enabled incredible money to Iraqi travel agencies and smugglers, which could attract a large number of clients who want an easy trip to Europe, where they believe that work and a comfortable life await them, reports "The Telegraph".

Travel agencies offer Iraqis and Syrians a package deal to travel to Belarus, with ads implying that they can travel and look for work in Europe.

The ads posted on social networks are designed to make the trip look legitimate and promise uninterrupted travel, emphasizing that passengers are issued seven-day tourist visas to Belarus.

In a recent post on Facebook, the travel agency said that it brings people to Europe in "conventional ways".

"European airlines need 1.2 million refugees alone. Take the opportunity. Pay us upon arrival," reads the announcement, which was subsequently deleted, after it attracted media attention, "Jutarnji list" reports.

Who are the customers?

In Shiladze, an Iraqi Kurdish city, a travel agent told Reuters last month that he had sold packages to 200 people since the business took off in late spring.

Nearly 400 people from the area of ​​that city, where 40.000 people live, have already arrived in Belarus this year, and more and more of them are leaving day by day, according to a local journalist.

"Many of my relatives and friends have gone that way. And many others want to do the same," Abdullah Omar, a 38-year-old hairdresser from Shiladze, told Reuters.

"People sold their homes or cars to afford it." Many in the city cite poor economic conditions and the conflict between Turkey and the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is active in the area, as the reason for leaving.

"Our area is surrounded, it is in the hands of the PKK and the Turks. Our region is beautiful, but we are scared and do not believe we will stay here," Halkaft Muhammad, a resident of Shiladze, told Reuters that his 19-year-old son arrived in Germany in September.

Flights

At first, passengers flew directly from Iraq to Minsk on Iraqi Airways and Fly Baghdad flights.

But in August, the European Union put pressure on Iraq to stop direct flights, and travel agencies began selling intermediate-landing trips to Dubai or Turkey. Passengers, who use their passports and fly regular commercial flights, report being told that entering Europe is legal if they have a Belarusian visa. Travel can cost more than 9.000 euros, taking into account flights and smuggling across the EU border, say those selling package deals.

When they arrive in Minsk, passengers are transported in black Mercedes vans to three- and four-star hotels in the Belarusian capital, as reported by the Lithuanian national electronic media LRT English.

While waiting for the transfer to the border, migrants are supplied with groceries in Belarusian shopping centers.

Arrival in Minsk and transition to the EU

They buy cheap tents, sleeping bags, winter clothes, rubber boots and thick gloves to protect their hands from the barbed wire on the fences on the border, reports the Polish television Belsat.

These groups are always accompanied by a translator when shopping, according to the Belarusian channel on the social media Telegram. After several days of waiting in Minsk, passengers are transported for several hours to the border with Poland, Lithuania or Latvia, from where they try to cross the EU on foot, sometimes under the guidance of Belarusian border guards.

Sometimes they walk for hours through the woods before reaching the border. Many were told they would be picked up and taken to Germany or France, but most were detained by European border guards.

By the time they are intercepted, many migrants get rid of their documents, Lithuanian Deputy Interior Minister Arnoldas Abramavicius told the Washington Post, adding that 75 per cent said they were from Iraq.