Homo sapi­ens began migrat­ing from Africa to Europe some­where between sev­en­ty and 100,00 years ago. In rel­a­tive­ly short order they over­whelmed the humanoid species already there. The Euro­pean Union seems to see the migrant cri­sis on the Belarus-Poland bor­der as the mod­ern incar­na­tion, which begs the ques­tion: Why are they han­dling it so badly?

The West is well to the point of over-stocked with think tanks, intel­li­gence ser­vices, satel­lite imagery and the expe­ri­ence of the last decade, yet blink­ers and blind­folds seem to be part of pol­i­cy mak­ers’ wardrobes. Moscow, on the oth­er hand, is strut­ting the pro­pa­gan­da run­way, with no qualms about whether it’s in bad taste.
Russ­ian for­eign min­istry spokes­woman Maria Zakharo­va said Britain (and by clear impli­ca­tion its allies) has “a clear his­tor­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty for every­thing that has hap­pened in the region…the destruc­tion of Iraqi state­hood, the end­less flows of refugees, the emer­gence of ISIS, the human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ters in this part of the world.”
Mis­an­throp­ic as the charges are, Putin has a point, in a man­ner of speaking.
The UK and U.S. et al were hap­py to break Iraq, but not to accept the pot­tery shop rule: “You break it, you own it”. The mess was exac­er­bat­ed by the lack of com­mit­ment to stay­ing the course in Syria.
Leav­ing Afghanistan to the Tal­iban was in the end, unavoid­able. What’s left behind was suc­cinct­ly summed up by World Food Pro­gramme (WFP) Exec­u­tive Direc­tor David Beasley: “Afghanistan is now among the world’s worst human­i­tar­i­an crises – if not the worst – and food secu­ri­ty has all but col­lapsed. This win­ter, mil­lions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migra­tion and star­va­tion unless we can step up our life-sav­ing assis­tance, and unless the econ­o­my can be resuscitated”.
In the mid­dle of that, the Tal­iban are hunt­ing down any­one who worked for for­eign agen­cies or the armies that occu­pied the coun­try for 20 years.

                                     IMPOSSIBLE ODDS MADE WORSE

When star­va­tion, vio­lence and oppres­sion are your fore­see­able future, spend­ing your life sav­ings and risk­ing death for the dream and faint hope of reach­ing Europe is hor­ri­fy­ing­ly logical.
It is also a sear­ing indict­ment of the “log­ic” of West­ern gov­ern­ments that decry Belarus Pres­i­dent Alexan­der Lukashenko as a dic­ta­tor, yet tac­it­ly accept and do busi­ness with Third World lead­ers whose klep­to­crat­ic ten­den­cies and human rights abus­es make him look like an amateur.
An eigh­teen-year-old Eritre­an res­cued from a sink­ing boat off the island of Lampe­dusa, told me knew when he set off on the migrant trail that his chances of mak­ing it to Europe alive were “about ten per­cent.” Why, I asked him, would he risk such mis­er­able odds? “Because,” he said mat­ter-of-fact­ly, “if I stayed in Eritrea, my chances were zero.”
West­ern neglect of devel­op­ment in favour of aid in Africa is anoth­er migra­tion dri­ver. “Over 75% of the world’s poor live in Africa today. In 1970 the fig­ure was 10%. ..it could rise to  90% by 2030. Africa is the only con­ti­nent in the world where offi­cial aid inflow out­rips pri­vate cap­i­tal inflow by a large margin…no coun­try in the world has achieved sub­stan­tial devel­op­ment based on reliance on aid.”
Add in cli­mate change that exac­er­bates floods, drought and famine and the inevitable result is migra­tion as relent­less as the orig­i­nal version.

                                  BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU CALL IT

There is ample evi­dence and no debate that the Belarus author­i­ties are exploit­ing des­per­ate migrants as a weapon to counter sanctions.
E.U. for­eign pol­i­cy chief Josep Bor­rell Fontelles warned that the bloc is deter­mined “to stand up to the instru­men­tal­i­sa­tion of migrants for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es,” and added: “We are push­ing back on this inhu­man and ille­gal practice.”
Pol­ish Prime Min­is­ter Mateusz Moraw­iec­ki accused Lukashenko of wag­ing “a mod­ern hybrid war”. The term means using uncon­ven­tion­al meth­ods to achieve strate­gic objec­tives with­out engag­ing in open hos­til­i­ties. (Russ­ian cyber attacks are a prime example.)

                           BUT IF IT LOOKS LIKE A WAR…

Migrants can be for­giv­en if they don’t appre­ci­ate the nuance between “hybrid” and “open” war­fare. Those massed along the bor­der (with the help and report­ed­ly some­times prod­ding of Belarus police in riot gear), are con­front­ed by Pol­ish police, bar­ri­ers of razor wire, tear­gas and water cannons.
Based on his record, Lukashenko is rep­re­hen­si­ble, crim­i­nal, inhu­man, disgusting…pick a pejo­ra­tive adjec­tive and it applies. Using the migrants to retal­i­ate is a no-brain­er for the dic­ta­tor and his “BFF” — or more accu­rate­ly pup­pet mas­ter — Vladimir Putin. “Min­sk and Moscow know that one of Europe’s biggest vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties is its vis­cer­al reac­tion to migration.”
So far, the Euro­peans haven’t let them down. Poland barred jour­nal­ists and aid work­ers from its bor­der with Belarus, which is hard­ly in keep­ing with any tenets of the Euro­pean Union. The nor­mal­ly anti-free­dom of the Press author­i­ties in Belarus, on the oth­er hand, seized the pub­lic­i­ty gift and let jour­nal­ists join the migrants at the bar­ri­cades. The cyn­i­cal ploy effec­tive­ly made the migrants Europe’s equiv­a­lent of the alba­tross in Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”.
The tor­ment­ed sailor around whose neck the bird’s car­cass was hung famous­ly lament­ed: “Water, water, everywhere/ Nor any drop to drink”.
A less poet­ic but apt ver­sion from the migrants on the Belarus-Poland bor­der might be: “Cruel­ty, cru­el­ty everywhere/nor any drop of human kind­ness to drink.”

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