Europe’s utter failure to tackle its refugee crisis is writ large on Idomeni, a Greek border village that threatens to become a byword for misery, and for the rapid unravelling of relations among EU members and their Balkan neighbours.
One year ago, locals reported that a growing number of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa were appearing around Idomeni, where a rail line rattles through fields, woods and scrubland from northern Greece into Macedonia.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) says about 13,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean in the first two months of 2015, and many trekked through Idomeni on their way towards western Europe.
So far this year, more than 112,000 migrants have landed in Greece, and once bucolic Idomeni now hosts a sprawling and increasingly desperate refugee camp.
“We’ve been here for six days,” said Murad (18), from the town of Afrin near Syria’s border with Turkey.
“About 50 of us arrived from Turkey on a boat to Kastellorizo island. Then we travelled north through Greece, and a bus left us about 30km from here. With the kids in our group, and our bags, it took us about 10 hours to walk here.”
Last spring, by day, gaggles of people traipsed along the main highway towards Idomeni, lugging babies and bundles of belongings; by night, they snuck into Macedonia with traffickers who charged them many hundreds of euro each.
Daily limits
The same is happening again now, as Greece tries to reduce the flow of people to Idomeni, after Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia decided to allow only around 580 people from Syria and Iraq to cross their territory each day; these states say they are acting in response to daily limits imposed by Austria.
With an average of about 2,000 people still arriving from Turkey each day, and better spring sailing weather on its way, some 22,000 refugees and migrants are now effectively trapped in Greece, and more than 6,000 are stuck at Idomeni.
“Syria is terrible now, but this is pretty bad too,” said Naima Khalid (42), a Kurd from northern Syria.
“If not for my four children, I would have stayed in Syria to fight. I came to Europe for them, for their future. We’ve been here for six days, and spent maybe €1,000 on travel and everything in Greece. And we spent more than $1,000 each to get here from Turkey – we don’t have much left now.”
Sleeping rough
Major humanitarian agencies at Idomeni offer food, basic medical help and a place to sleep for some, but thousands now spend nights in small tents pitched around the fields and beside the railway tracks, and others simply sleep rough.
Beside the razor-wire fence along the border, some of the most vulnerable refugees wait in hope that the gate will briefly open – people in wheelchairs, amputees on crutches, the sick, elderly and several very young babies.
“We arrived yesterday but could not find a tent; do you know where we can get one? Last night we slept outside,” said Saud Bezara, from Idlib in Syria. Her friend, music teacher Iman Dahnoon, began to cry.
“It would have been better to die quickly at home, under bombs in Syria, than slowly in a place like this,” she said.
Greece is scrambling to provide accommodation for the rapidly rising number of travellers on its territory, and has turned a former airport terminal and a disused sports stadium in Athens into dormitories.
Conditions are basic and in some places squalid, however, and migrants and refugees do all they can to move on as swiftly as possible.
Those with enough money pay inflated fares for a taxi journey towards Idomeni, tearing along the highway past hundreds making the same trip on foot.
A petrol station 20km from the border is now temporary home to hundreds of people, who rest and eat here while waiting in hope that the border rules will change, or before striking out with smugglers to try to find a way across the frontier.
The EU’s police agency, Europol, believes people-smuggling gangs made up to €6 billion last year from the refugee crisis, and they continue to operate around Idomeni and further north all along the Balkan route to western Europe.
Refugees at Idomeni said that as well as offering to guide them into Macedonia, where police from several EU states are now helping to patrol the border, some smugglers claimed to be able to take them into Albania.
This would be a fresh turn for the Balkan route, but migration experts say it is inevitable that traffickers will find new and lucrative ways to get desperate people to where they want to go, often with help from corrupt police and border guards.
Dire consequences
Senior EU officials are warning of dire consequences if the bloc’s leaders fail to make major progress in talks next Monday with Turkey, which has so far failed to deliver on a €3 billion deal to dramatically cut the number of migrants reaching Greece.
“Today, there are 22,000 refugees and migrants (in Greece),” its minister for migration, Yannis Mouzalas, said yesterday.
“We estimate that in our country the number of those trapped will be from 50,000- 70,000 people next month.”
Generous help
Pope Francis yesterday praised Greece’s “generous” help for refugees, and said a “concerted response can be more effective and distribute equally the weight” of Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the second World War.
Central Europe, led by Hungary, rejects Germany’s proposal to share refugees among EU countries, however, and member states are increasingly acting alone or in narrow alliances that preclude co-operation across the bloc.
In the absence of a plan to solve the crisis in Europe, the continent’s leaders hope Syria’s fragile ceasefire will reduce refugee numbers fleeing the country this year.
Syrians at Idomeni do not share their optimism.
“I don’t believe in this ceasefire,” said Murad.
“Everyone is killing everyone else in Syria now – I don’t think I’ll be able to go home for many years.”
