For Syrians who want to leave their war-torn country at all costs and go to Europe, all it takes is a simple message on WhatsApp to begin the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, starting from Libya.
At least 141 Syrians were on board a migrant boat from Libya, which sank off the coast of Greece in June. Only around 100 of the approximately 750 passengers survived.
AFP interviewed smugglers and Syrian migrants about the journey to Libya where migrants regroup in deplorable conditions before making the journey to the central Mediterranean, the deadliest migration route in the world. All requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.
“We finalize everything over the phone,” a smuggler in Daraa, southern Syria, told AFP via WhatsApp.
The province, birthplace of the 2011 uprising that escalated into civil war and claimed half a million lives, remains unstable despite returning to government control in 2018.
“We ask for a copy of (every traveler’s) passport and tell them where to deposit the money,” adds the smuggler: “We send a group every month. People sell their houses and leave.”
Candidates leaving generally deposit the money — more than 6,000 dollars per person — at a bureau de change, which takes a commission.
The smuggler said he is paid once the migrants reach Italy, declining to specify his earnings. The boat trip is organized by his partner in eastern Libya.
In this country plunged into chaos, two governments are vying for power: that of Tripoli in the west recognized by the UN, and supported in particular by Turkey, and that of the strongman of the east, Khalifa Haftar, which maintains ties with Damascus.
A travel agency in Deraa told an AFP journalist posing as a migrant that the package deal cost $6,500.
It includes the plane ticket, an entry document to eastern Libya, airport pick-up, transport, accommodation, boat trip to Italy and a life jacket , said the agency joined on WhatsApp.
The migrants are installed “in a hotel or a furnished apartment”, added the agency, but the Syrian migrants assured that these promises were rarely kept.
Several said they were placed in crowded, disease-spreading warehouses guarded by armed guards engaging in violence and extortion of migrants.
Omar, 23, from Deraa province, borrowed $8,000 so he could leave “a country with no future” by this road.
Now in Germany, he says he spent two weeks locked up in a hangar near the coast in eastern Libya with 200 other people.
“They abused us, shouted at us, humiliated us, beat us,” the young man recalls. The guards only gave them meager meals of rice, bread and cheese.
On the day of departure, “about twenty armed men forced us to run” from the shed towards the sea. “They beat us with the butts of their rifles”, he adds: “When we reached the shore I was exhausted.”
Would-be emigrants have also found a subterfuge to travel to western Libya from Turkey, which has locked access to Syrians, depriving them of the main migration route.
In northern Syria controlled by pro-Turkish rebel groups, a man recruiting fighters claimed to have smuggled migrants into Libya posing as pro-Turkish mercenaries.
“Every six months, we take advantage of the rotation of fighters to send people with them,” the recruiter told AFP.
These are Syrians from the provinces of Aleppo and Idleb, partially under the control of the opposition, “especially those who live in the miserable camps for displaced people”, he specifies.
Registered as “combatants”, Syrian migrants are entitled to a “salary” paid by the Turks of some 2,500 dollars: the armed group pockets almost half, itself takes the rest and the migrants benefit from a free trip, explains the recruiter.
Migrants must pass through camps of pro-Turkish groups before going to Turkey, from where they reach Tripoli. There, they pass through Syrian militia camps before being put in contact with smugglers, who ask them for $2,000 to transport them to Italy, according to the same source.
The path from areas controlled by the Syrian regime to Libya may be more tortuous, “to cover our tracks”, says the Deraa smuggler.
AFP was able to see a bundled plane ticket for around 20 Syrian migrants who traveled to Lebanon by land, from where they embarked for a Gulf country, then Egypt, before landing in Benghazi in eastern Libya.
Direct flights from the private Syrian company Cham Wings also connect Damascus to Benghazi. Cham Wings was blacklisted by the European Union in 2021 for its alleged involvement in transporting illegal migrants to Belarus, before sanctions were lifted in July 2022.
Asked by AFP, Osama Satea, a spokesperson for Cham Wings, assured that the company only transported people with valid travel documents and authorization for Libya.
Syrians need a permit from the local authorities to enter Benghazi, but Deraa’s smuggler assures AFP that this is not a problem: “in Libya, as in Syria, paying security officials can do everything solve”.
“We have a guy in the security apparatus who gets the authorizations in a jiffy,” he says.
Migrants told AFP that an acolyte of the smugglers, sometimes a security guard, had escorted them out of Benghazi airport.
A security clearance seen by AFP containing a list of 80 Syrians bore the logo of Marshal Haftar’s forces.
Arrived in Libya, the Syrians can wait weeks or months before the most perilous stage of the journey.
The central Mediterranean is the most dangerous migration route in the world with more than 20,000 deaths since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Among the survivors of the ship that sank in June off the coast of Greece was a 23-year-old Syrian man, who paid more than $6,000 for the trip.
“I knew I was taking risks, but I did not expect this,” he told AFP who joined him in Europe, recounting the fights for water and food that left six dead. , and the fact of having had to drink sea water from the fifth day.
“I wanted to leave the war behind me, live my life and help my family,” he adds. “But I say today to those who want to leave the same way: don’t do it!”.
16/08/2023 09:50:06 – Beirut (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
