Europe’s unknown war

Abstract

The EU's response to the global 'refugee crisis' has involved the returning of refugees to war zones, for example in Afghanistan, in breach of human rights conventions. But it has also been so determined to stop further asylum seekers reaching European waters or shores that it has entered into the most dubious of agreements with countries outside the EU. Using bribery (aid, promises of investment, even the prospect of membership of the EU) and blackmail (threats of withdrawal of support for educational and health programmes), the EU has inveigled and browbeaten countries around the Mediterranean and as far afield as sub-Saharan Africa, to undertake immigration controls on its behalf. This has involved the EU in agreements with repressive regimes such as Turkey, Sudan and Eritrea, designed to block the movements of millions of people in the Middle East and Africa necessitated by war, famine, climate change and religious conflict. The outsourcing of migration policy to countries run by known dictators and war criminals has come at the expense of Europe's humanitarian tradition, argues the author, who looks at the implications of policy by country and region.

The EU's Proxy War on Refugees

“…Michael Grewcock (2010) has termed this, in another setting, "Australia's 'War' on Illicit Migrants". Webber and Grewcock's formulations bear a close resemblance to ours and reassure us that our interpretation of deterrence policies as a form of warfare, through externalized policies that we define as both proxy war and forms of state crime by proxy are not exaggerated (Grewcock 2010;Webber 2017). When an earlier version of this article was presented in 2015, we were advised to replace "proxy war" with less blunt expressions like "externalised violence" or "violent containment".…”

“…Whether from Syria, Iraq or sub-Saharan Africa, all are being forced back, deported from the EU (Anderson et al 2013). Webber (2017) describes arrangements between the EU and Afghanistan in the following terms:…”

What’s in a name? ‘Refugees’, ‘migrants’ and the politics of labelling

“…51 For instance, Webber notes that while the UK Court of Appeal had imposed a blanket ban on charter-flight deportations to Afghanistan in 2015 of 'failed' asylum seekers, most of whom were children, it lifted the ban in March 2016 'accepting that the Home Office was entitled to its view that although the provinces were not safe, the capital, where returnees would be sent, was'. 52 Outside the EU, acceptance of Afghan asylees has also been low. Consider Norway, for instance, which received 30,000 asylum claims in 2015, many from Syrians and Afghans travelling via the Arctic route and passing through Murmansk, a Russian city bordering Norway and Finland.…”

‘Our lives is in danger’: Manus Island and the end of asylum

“…19 What these and other practices such as forced returns and push-backs 'have in common', writes Frances Webber, 'is an utter ruthlessness in pursuit of the aim of stopping migration to Europe, combined with wilful blindness to the realities of repression and refusal to contemplate the human rights violations to which the agreements will inevitably and necessarily give rise'. 20 Such responses by EU states reflect the longer-term operation of western exclusion zones around Europe, the United States and Australia. In the US and Australia, which were not as directly affected by the changed forced migration patterns as the European states, the 'crisis' was absorbed into the political lexicon justifying the intensification of pre-existing exclusionary policies.…”