Angry Planet - Who are Europe’s migrants, and do they pose a threat?

Episode Date: September 15, 2015

War College talks to author and journalist Robert Young Pelton talks about the waves of immigrants washing up on the shores of Europe and why things have gotten worse in the last few months. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. They're viewing this influx, something like a quarter of a million people, came across by sea so far as an invasion. I'm Jason Fields. Reuters Opinion Editor, and with me as always is Matthew Galt of War is Boring.

Today we're talking about the European Migration Crisis with Robert Young Pelton, author of the world's most dangerous places. He's also the founder of MigrantReport.org, which tracks movement of people displaced by conflict. You're listening to War College, a weekly discussion of a world in conflict focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Here's your host, Jason Fulner. fields. So, Robert, who are these migrants and why is there such an incredible flood of them into Europe right now? Well, I think a migrant is essentially anyone who has been either involuntarily or voluntarily displaced from his home and who's heading for what he thinks or she thinks is a better life.

And right now we have probably the highest number of displaced people at 59 million, according to the U.S. But we also have the globalization of information. So people are communicating with everybody all around the world. So if they see a job prospect or a relative or somebody says, come here, do that, they feel more enabled to get from point A to point B. So you're seeing a huge movement of people all across the planet. So we're not just talking about Europe. I mean, that's where people's eyes are focused right now,

because that's where some of the worst catastrophe element. are. I mean, that's where people are dying in the Mediterranean. Can you explain that dynamic in particular? Yeah, I should mention that when I set up these websites, you know, I did one on piracy. I set it up in 2008. It was called Somali Report. I did a report in Afghanistan called AfPaks, which covered Afghanistan and Pakistan. I did one in Iraq. And the idea was to get on the ground and find out what's actually going on and basically bypass the media in which, you know, you read to understand what's really going on. So I try to choose events that I think are going to come to the forefront.

So the movement of people across borders, whether it's legal, illegal or semi-legal or irregular, as they call it here, I think is the next big thing. The essentially destruction of boundaries and people wanting to move from one place to another because of a job because they're fleeing oppression is going to shape our world over the next 10 years, 20 years. How do you think that the European countries are going to deal with this problem then? Do you foresee how they're going to do that over the next 10 years? Are the borders going to come down?

Well, here's an interesting thing. You know, I'm an American, I live in America. I immigrated from Canada to America. It wasn't much of a cultural shock. Europe has a history of being invaded, not necessarily migrated to. It's not known as a place in which people leave. one country and come to Europe, you know, from a Western standpoint. So they're viewing this influx, something like a quarter of a million people came across by sea so far as an invasion

because there's culture shock, there's difference in ethnicities, race. And as you know, Europe is not one place. It's made out of a number of countries who all have their own unique cultural history and background. Some of it is very inflexible to incoming. culture. So you have everybody on the southern side being opposed to greater migration, and you have people towards the north being not so much opposed. So something like 80 some odd percent of, let's say, Italy and Greece and Spain oppose greater migration, whereas it's something like 45 percent in Germany, which is about equal to America. So you've got a political problem in which people don't want new people coming to their country, but you also have an underlying problem in which

many countries in Europe are dying. So like Hungary, which is vociferously against migration, is actually shrinking in size, and so are many other countries. So you have the political dynamic, and you also have the economic dynamic. I've read something actually fascinating just along the lines of what you were talking about, that since populations are declining in southern and eastern Europe,

actually there's plenty of places, Serbia in particular, is actually saying there are towns for you to move into there are places for you to come. This is correct. Well, you're seeing a migration of these people, and they're coming to work here. I mean, they're coming to take menial jobs. Some of them are lawyers, doctors, but they're happy to work as a dishwasher.

You're seeing entire towns in Spain being put up for sale for nothing. So basically, please come to this old agricultural center and just take over these homes. So, you know, you can drive through Italy and Spain and Greece, and you can see these old, beautiful, picturesque towns, with empty houses and buildings, and yet you see migrants cooped up in camps. Now, I'm not, you know, dictating to how Europe handles its problems, but, you know, simple math tells you that if you've got a workforce

that's coming to do labor at a lower rate and wants to start from scratch, and you've got a reduction in your population, it would make sense logically. Now, ethnically and historically does it make sense for people to come from Central Africa to live in the hill towns of Spain, Well, that's something they have to deal with. When I hear about this migrant problem, I often think that it's people fleeing conflict zones in the Middle East

and specifically that they're fleeing ISIS. Is that accurate or is it more complicated than that? Okay, so depending on where you look, I'm we're focused on the Central Mediterranean, but the people, the bulk of people that are coming across are from Syria. They are not necessarily fleeing ISIS, they're fleeing the camps. So the conflict's been going on for a very long time.

time. Syrians are typically educated, you know, people used to having a job, are being held in camps. They're applying for visas. They're not being accepted for asylum, even though they are, you know, fleeing persecution and violence. And they're finally saying, to heck with it, I'm getting on a boat. So when I was in Libya, I met a young Syrian lawyer. He's about 25. He had applied, he's a lawyer. He applied to all the countries as a refugee. They basically turned him down or sandbagged his applications. And he said, you know, the hell with it. So within four days he was on a boat

and heading across the Mediterranean. Two days later, he was in Europe. So you can see that this system is essentially creating itself to move people where there's a least amount of resistance. And if you make it to Europe, am I right in thinking that you're not immediately deported? It's not the same system as we have in the United States. where we often try to turn people around right at the border almost?

Well, there's somewhat of a laissez-faire attitude in northern Europe towards migrants. And typically what they try to say is, okay, if you came from the Gambia, you're an economic migrant, you don't need to be here, you're just here for jobs, so back you go. But is there a massive police force rooting out all the apartment buildings and all the construction sites? No. So these people are basically coming to Europe and getting jobs and fitting in. sending a significant amount of that money, sometimes up to 80, 90 percent, back home so

that the rest of their family can join them. I mean, this is something people don't see. These migrants move back and forth. So, you know, I spend time with Somalis who not only feel very comfortable about moving all the way from, let's say, Mogadishu to Berlin, but also going all the way back from Berlin to Mogadishu or sending money back and forth. So they don't see these barriers that we see. The way you describe it, that's actually very interesting.

It sounds more like what we are used to in the United States than I think a lot of people would realize. I mean, that is a pattern of people coming to the United States over the southern border in particular, and then working like crazy and sending money back home, sometimes to bring people, you know, their families here, but sometimes just to help support their town or village back where they came from, right? No, but it's worse. I mean, it's not worse. It's more complex than that. So, for example, a young man will come from Mexico. He'll pay, it goes up in price every day, but he'll pay, let's say, $1,200. He'll pay to a coyote. He'll get across the border. He'll work at a job for, let's say, six months to a year. He'll send his money back. He'll save his money. And he'll go back home. And he'll literally walk right back across the border. He'll pay another $1,200.

Now, $1,200 is what I pay to fly to Europe. And you can call me a migrant. You know, we call white people. who are white-collar workers' expats. But the point is, this is not a one-way street. Everybody isn't flowing into Africa. People are flowing all around the world. I have a question about the language that we're using. What's the, forgive what may be an ignorant question, but what is the difference between a refugee and a migrant?

Well, the UN just put out a press release basically saying, no, these are not migrants, they're refugees, which is a political label, which means you're fleeing some kind of oppression. So, okay, fine. You go to Syria, you look at the city, you look at the region, you say, okay, the place is devastated, and people are trying to kill you.

So if you're a member of a certain sect or an ethnic group and ISIS or Al Nusur is trying to kill you and you're a Shia, okay, fine, you can't go back home. So Europe has a history of accepting these people as refugees. A migrant is a little bit more of a neutral term. It links to migration, which means like birds, you know, turtles, migrants. great back and forth, and it doesn't put a label on you saying that you're fleeing something.

So in a typical boat that rescues people on the Mediterranean, you might find people from Nigeria who say they're escaping Boko Haram. You'll find Pakistanis who said they were guest workers and they're being persecuted. You'll find there was a Filipino on the Phoenix boat who basically was a nurse, was a surgical nurse, but wasn't getting paid and just had to get out of there. So the huge spectrum of stories and reasons and purposes, but I guess my point is that in Europe, we feel that there are barriers. There's a wall, you know, like castles and moats, the Mediterranean is a moat, and you can't come here because you don't have permission.

But in actual fact, there is nothing stopping them. So you see these fences going up in Hungary and places like that. They're putting more fences. They had three. They're putting up four fences by Calais to keep people from jumping trains. They just flow around it. You just mentioned Hungary and the walls they're building. They're also considering deploying the military there.

That's correct, right? Yeah, but it's ebb and flow. So you saw in Macedonia, they tried to stop this huge influx of people that were coming across into Greece and heading north. It's like a river, right? You can build a dam and then all of a sudden it overflows. And it got very ugly.

I mean, they were shooting at people. They were gassing them, and these poor little children were screaming and yelling. They don't want to go to Macedonia. They want to keep moving north. to Europe or Sweden or places where there's jobs and a better welcome. So I think a lot of the countries are realizing this is more of a political statement. You know, remember we have walls in Mexico.

That hasn't stopped anything. You know, Donald Trump talks about building a wall that will stop Mexicans from coming. These are just symbolic things. China built a wall, if you remember, a few thousand years ago. That didn't stop anybody. Right. Hadrian's wall wasn't particularly effective either. I think you can jump over that. That's about four feet.

Well, can we talk for a minute about some of the causes that are behind this massive wave of migration? One thing that is just this is the one thing that always crosses my mind, which is environmental issues, environmental degradation, which we've been told to expect droughts. just rising temperatures, I mean, making resources more scarce. I mean, do you think, is that a factor, or is that just me being caught up in the science fiction? No, you're picking up on something that's quite valid. So typically if you're a minority, like let's say the Rohingyas or the Rohingyas in Myanmar or Bangladesh, those camps and the places they're kept are on the floodlands. you know, they're in the worst part, least valuable real estate.

If you look at where refugee camps are put up, they're in wastelands and deserts and arid places that don't support agricultural use. All over the world, every time you look at a map, but if you say, okay, where are they keeping the least-liked minority? It's usually in the crappiest place because obviously the best places are owned by the minorities or the majorities that have the best land.

So it's the trailer park syndrome. You know, why are trailer parks? is always being flooded because they're on the cheapest land by the river. So, yes, there's a definite link to bad sighting. Now, if you say global warming and rising oceans, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, yes and no, I don't think there's a direct correlation. There was a documentary producer who wanted to definitely link migration with desertification and, you know, sort of degradation of the environment.

I said, yes, of course. there are people who used to, let's say in Somalia, used to move their camels from one end to another, and they can't because it's arid. But these weather patterns tend to be cyclical. So it's more likely that, let's say, a tsunami would displace more people or a drought or fire. General global warming.

Now, we can argue that for another hour's show, and I think there is evidence to prove that. But what we're seeing right now in Europe is not a direct result of the environment. It is a direct result of political, conflicts of economic destitution, you know, very simple things to understand. So why now, though, I guess?

And you're saying, when you say 59, you said 59 million, right? Well, that's the global number put up by the UN of people who are not in their homes. They can be internally displaced or they can be externally displaced, right? The people that are moving is increasing dramatically for two reasons. One is there are wars that are stagnating. In other words, there's no solution to these wars, so people, can't go home, so they have to make a decision. Do I sit in this refugee camp as a doctor or a lawyer, or do I move on? So they'll take that risk. Secondly, there's a smuggling infrastructure,

quite a sophisticated infrastructure that has set up to move people, almost like travel agencies, directly from the camps and from the war zones to Europe, two places that provide some kind of hope or promise. And along the way, people are being killed, abused, kidnapped, extorted, etc, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Are there any historical analogs? Is something like this ever happened before? Yeah, well, look, Europe, you know, you think of World War II, you had mass exodus of Europeans as they found their cities bombed and burnt and destroyed, and they all moved to America,

Canada, Australia. You know, this is not a unique phenomenon. Now, that's legal migration. In other words, people agreed to take X thousands of people. Now what you're seeing is Europe, having... a very slow reaction to a very large, rapidly growing crisis. So it's like a government discussing how many matches you should have when there's a forest fire. They just can't keep up with the scale of this. So what do you see, if you see any solutions for this? I see a polarization.

I see one segment of society being sympathetic to the idea that people are leaving a bad place and going to a good place and that they inherently will get jobs and their kids will assimilate. just like we had in America. But then I also see the other side, which is fear, hatred, loathing, racism, prejudice. And some are well-founded. I mean, some systems are so overloaded that people can't get jobs, and there are problems in some cities in Europe with just this huge influx of people. I mean, we're talking about 7,000 people a weekend, you know, getting on boats

and being pushed into the European system. So you've got government systems that are overloaded. You've got governments that just literally cannot respond in any meaningful fashion. And you've got urban areas where these people tend to go that see these huge clusters of people looking for work and they cause stress. So I see it getting worse and better. Now, is there a magic solution to the influx of a region as large as Africa and the Middle East? Of course not.

So it will cause stress. Speaking of the stress of it, there's one element that gets brought up over and over and over again, which is, are there terrorists in the midst of the migrants? That's something that's brought up, whether or not it's a legitimate concern. That's actually I was hoping you could explain. Yeah, I mean, I'm called myself an expert, but I'm pretty knowledgeable about this. ISIS currently is located in Dernah and CERC, two small areas in Libya.

There are also other groups, whether it's Boko Haram or El-Shabaab and Samar. Malia, these people are not going to put themselves through the system that processes migrants. In other words, when a migrant comes to Europe, he's fingerprinted, you know, they identify him, he's got a source of entry. Most terrorists, if you look historically, just get on a plane and fly to wherever they want. And most terrorists tend to be homegrown because of the Internet. They tend to be able to reach out to people in their own cities, whether it's Paris or New York or London and motivate them to do destructive things.

So I think people, once again, it's xenophobia where you assume that the enemy's on the other side of the wall. I meet more terrorist driving cabs in New York than I do sometimes in Afghanistan. Hold on. Did you mean that literally? I mean, people who are members of radical terrorist groups in the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s who have migrated through these various refugees. programs, and it just so happened that they were the good guys at the time because we were backing

them versus the bad guys. And I'm just saying that if you stop and look at our world, it's a very porous, flowing system, and people's political allegiances can shift globally. And you've seen a lot of this where people either are coming to Syria to learn how to be terrorists or they're literally not even moving out of their mother's basement and becoming a terrorist. Yeah, it's actually It's interesting because I should say

that Reuters, we don't use the word terrorist. I mean, the idea of being, and I probably shouldn't have, but the idea being that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, right? No, I don't think that's true.

I think terrorist is a very specific term for someone who uses violence against civilians for a greater aim, in other words, to project fear, right? Are they convicted of it? No, because they're usually blown up.

up and there's a splat on the side of a wall. So we can argue the merits of terms, terrorist, migrant, whatever. But your question was, are terrorists coming across in boats to Europe? And I would say very much no, because we literally see these people on a daily basis. We talk to them ad nauseum. We film them. We understand where they're from. And we're also, in my business, very, very cognizant of who the members of, like Al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab.

You know, these people are very, very different than people who are leaving one place to go to another place for economic or safety. Robert, can you tell us a little bit more about that business, Moaz specifically? Yeah, well, Moaz is not a business. It's an NGO. It's a charity. It was created by Christopher and Regina Cantraboni. Regina is Italian. Christopher is an American. He was successful in the insurance business as it relates to conflict areas. He handled cases when somebody got wounded. He would make sure they get to a hospital and then their claim was paid. In 2014, he saw the beginnings of these deaths, the mortality rate of people on these boats, which are designed to sink essentially and wondered why it took so long to get to these people and why the death rate was so high.

So in 2014, he bought an old fishing boat. He retrofitted it for specifically for search and rescue. We put two very sexy high-tech Shebel S-100 camcopters on the back, which is like a helicopter-type drone, but a professional one. And he decided if you can get to these people soon enough, the mortality rate would drop. And by having the drone, you have a much wider area of operation. And by having professional search and rescue people on board, you can make sure that everybody gets on the boat alive. So so far, he's had a zero accident rate, which is astounding when you consider the deaths during rescue that's been going on. So after operations for two years, they've rescued over 10,000 people and they had zero casualties or injuries.

And MSF provides, Medicine San Frantir, provides medical care on the boat as well. Are there any other groups doing the same thing? Yeah, so when we started, we were the only group out there. Then Medicine San Fronterer put two boats into the ocean. the Bourbon Argos and the Dignity One. There is a guy who has a very interesting small boat called Sea Watch, which we're always more worried that he might need rescue, but he's got a very tiny boat, and he's very determined,

and he's rescued people. You've got a fairly substantial naval presence out there, very professional people. You've got Coast Guard, and you also have commercial ships, and about 30 to 40 percent of rescues are actually done by commercial ships who travel along that area. So it's all coordinated by Rome Rescue Center. All the migrants that are rescued are taken to Italy.

They're processed there, and they magically end up somewhere in Northern Europe a few weeks later. Something you said a little bit ago when you were talking about the ships, you said they were basically designed to sink. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, so most people would say, okay, if I'm spending $1,000 to $500 to take a boat from Libya to Italy, You know, it's about a two, two and a half day sail, three days.

There'd be this beautiful shiny boat with seats and beds on it, and you know, you would get there in one piece. But that's not the case. So those boats used to travel, but they're basically disposable. So they would get the worst, oldest, most rotten boat, put these people on it, and then they would literally get all the way to places like Lampedusa. And then what happened is that people realized they were being rescued,

so they put them on worse boats, like rubber rail. boats that didn't have enough fuel, boats that were actually sinking when they left, and they would start packing them in. So the boats usually come from Egypt or Tunisia. They purchased their old fishing boats. They move them into position. They put the migrants in these sort of farmhouses or holding areas,

and when the weather gets good, usually around Friday, they start packing them on. And these poor people think they're getting this nice, shiny boat because they saw a picture on Facebook. And it turns out to be this rotten thing that they just pack, you know, 300. 400, 500, 700, 700 people. And they barely get out to the Boreauld fields.

And when the rescuers come, the most dangerous part is when these people think they're being rescued and they all go to one side of the boat and it flips over and the people down below drown. In the heat of this month, we've seen a lot of asphyxations, that people that are down with the engine that can't breathe, who are essentially being used as ballast to keep the boat weighted in the water. and it's a horrific sight to see that many humans crammed on one boat. And in a sad way, this is because there is no other way to get to Europe. You can't go the legal way.

So they go this way. And you said that people are finding out about these boats through social media. Do you know if that's the primary way that word gets out? Yeah, so somebody in a refugee camp in Syria. Now, keep in mind, these people know exactly what's going on. So they've got the Internet, they read the news like you and me. They can call their friends in Stockholm or Berlin. And they're usually guided towards these Facebook sites that advertise passage.

And they talk about the boat. They usually show a photograph of the boat. The smugglers then gather these people together in a local area. Libya is obviously one of the more popular places, but people are coming from Turkey and Syria and places like that to Greece. They're also trying to get across at Spain. They then link up with a local smuggler who then take. their money. They're promised they're going to get out of a

boat a certain time. They're told to show up at a certain place. And then they're taken by small boats up to these bigger boats and that's the point of no return because at that point when they see what a piece of crap their boat is, they can't turn back. So they're essentially forced on this boat, beaten to get on this boat. Sometimes they use at gunpoint to get on the boat. And then they set off and there is usually no smuggler on the boat. It's usually someone they

told in five minutes how to steer, how to adjust the engine. And they go as far as they can and of course when they're spotted a lot of them will call they have a compass they give them a very rudimentary ships compass because they have to go north and then when they get

past the oil fields they usually call on a theriah and they call in an SOS and then Rome Rescue Center send someone to go find them and hopefully if you can get to them soon enough they're not dead they're not drowning they're waiting to be taken off and then moved

to usually Sissile with their process How much does it cost to get on one of those boats? There's three kinds of boats. There are rubber rafts, which are sort of homemade Chinese inflatable rafts that have plywood floors and they usually fall apart. Those people pay between $150 and $400. There are the medium-sized fishing boats, which they don't have an upper deck. It's just sort of a big boat that's got a hold for fish.

And so you pay one price to be down below and you pay another on top. So that might range from 700. down below to, let's say, 1,200 on top. And then you have these bigger boats they're starting to bring in from Egypt, which are very tall. Some of them are three decks, so you've got people sitting literally on the roof, and you've got people in the cabin area, and you've got people down below. And these are the ones that are extremely unstable, and these are the ones that have been

flipping over in the last few weeks. So between the top end, you might pay $1,200 to sit on top, and you might pay about $700,000. 500 to sit below. So it's actually not that expensive. I mean, I know that for people who are desperate, it's always going to be a lot of money. It's cheaper than flying. It costs $625 for me to fly from Malta to Tripoli, one way. I can do it by raft for 400. I mean, I'm being facetious, but I mean, those are the choices you have. Well, so one last question. Can you just tell us what it is that you are hoping to accomplish? Well, the first thing I do is, is try to understand the problem.

So what Migrant Report does is it goes deep. It uses ground truth, in other words, real people that are on the ground. We gather this information. We look at it very analytically. We don't have an agenda. We're not for or against anything. We do maps. If you go to Migrantreport.org, you can see some of the amazing maps we've done in stories.

And then we hope that people who are looking for solutions or insight, whether it's the media or governments or scientists, start reading this very neutral but very, very in-depth source of information and develop ideas and ideally solutions. I mean, I'm not looking for an end-all-be-all solution. And this is what I've done in Afghanistan, I've done it in Pakistan, Somalia, I mean, just so people understand what's going on.

Because the media doesn't cover things in depth on a continuous basis. You know, they might do a big dive on New York Times it an excellent series of articles on criminality at sea and smuggling and slavery. But then it disappears, and then Donald Trump shows up, and you forgot that you read that. We focus on the issue of movement across boundaries every single day, and we hopefully get smarter and smarter every day until we understand the trends and we can predict trends. And ideally, we found a huge percentage of migrants are very, very dissatisfied with with what happened. And this is counterintuitive, but a lot of people don't like being in Europe.

You know, they came from Nigeria, they came from humble areas, and they're very, very unhappy, and they're trapped in Europe, and they wish they'd never left. So part of this is also working with migrants to understand the dangers and the pitfalls of believing all this hype and all the smuggler stuff and all the glorious, wonderful things that people are telling you. So ideally truth is where you start. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next time on War College. I don't know how many people have watched the movie Lord of War and what their opinions on it are, but there is a line in there that I feel sums this up perfectly when Nicholas Cage's character says, you know, it's so easy a child could use it, and they do.