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Human smuggling from Syria to Cyprus overtakes Lebanon route [1]
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Date: 2023-09
A rarely used migration route to Europe picked up steam this summer: boats started arriving in Cyprus directly from war-torn Syria.
The scale of this new traffic hasn’t been seen before in the eastern Mediterranean. Until now, refugees travelling to the island would generally have left from Lebanon or Turkey. But Cypriot and Lebanese deterrence measures, combined with the corrupt activities of military personnel in Syria, have pushed departures to the Syrian coast, between the cities of Latakia and Tartous.
Taim, a 26-year-old Syrian man from Aleppo, travelled the 60 miles (100 km) separating Syria from Cyprus on a fisherman’s boat in June, along with 40 other Syrians. “I wanted to travel legally,” he explained over the phone from a refugee camp in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. “For over a year I tried really hard to get every requirement asked for a Schengen visa. I spent a lot of money and got into lots of debt. But it was all for nothing.”
His goal was to continue his medical training in France. But, despite receiving an offer to study from a university in Marseille, the French embassy twice rejected his application for a visa. After that, he said, he felt he had no choice but to turn to smugglers.
“You don’t understand what it is like in Syria,” Taim said. “There is no future there. The fact I was studying medicine bought me some time but I was soon to be recruited in the army. In Syria, that means being recruited into forced labour indefinitely.”
Mamdouh, a 24-year-old Syrian man from Idlib, made the same journey as Taim two weeks later. Speaking over the phone from another refugee camp in Nicosia, he said, “We were 20 people on board, and left at 3:00 am from a beach close to Tartous.” Cypriot humanitarian organisations, such as the antiracist NGO KISA, confirmed that most asylum seekers now arriving by sea claim to have left from the Syrian coast.
Corruption and smuggling
Speaking with Mamdouh and Taim led us to their smuggler. Abu Ali is a 38-year-old man from Latakia, the largest Syrian city on the Mediterranean. He used to be a government employee before the war, but became a smuggler to sustain himself and his family when no other jobs were available.
He said that crossings from Syria to Cyprus began in 2020, and that he was one of the very first smugglers facilitating that route. Today he is not the only one, but Abu Ali still arranges roughly 20 boats each year, especially in the spring and summer period.
“I send people on fishing boats or rubber boats. With these kinds of boats, the only destination that can be reached is Cyprus,” he said. Longer routes, such as those leaving Turkey or Lebanon to Italy, require bigger yachts and sailing ships.
“We add an extra engine to the fishing boat and train one of the migrants to be the driver,” Abu Ali explained. He said they usually give the job to a young person who cannot afford the full fare, because they are less likely to be arrested when caught steering the boat. To his mind, he added, they shouldn’t be. “Drivers are not the smugglers,” he said.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/human-smuggling-from-syria-to-cyprus-overtakes-lebanon-route/
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