Who orchestrated the Ceuta migrant crossing?

The flipside of relying on agreements with bordering states to reduce migration flows, as the European Union does, is that those states can relax their controls as a way of exerting political pressure.

Allowing a rush of people to approach Europe’s borders has been used for political purposes repeatedly.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan removed controls and laid on buses to the border in 2020 in a bid to put pressure on EU governments and extract cash and concessions.

Finland labelled a surge of mostly Middle Eastern people across its border with Russia in 2023 a “systematic and organised” hybrid attack by Moscow.

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Lithuania and Poland used the same language to accuse Belarusian authorities of deliberately shepherding people towards their borders, pointing to a system of flying people in from the Middle East and pushing them across.

In 2021, 12,000 people crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in north Africa, waved through by border guards after Spain offended Morocco by allowing the head of a breakaway region to receive medical treatment in La Rioja. Madrid accused Rabat – which claims sovereignty over the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla – of using migrants to make a political point.

In late July this year, as many as 80,000 people are estimated to have swam or climbed the border fence into Ceuta.

An incursion of such a scale can only be co-ordinated.

And so it was: the mass crossing was organised on Facebook and WhatsApp groups. It spread on social media with dedicated hashtags and catchphrases, many of them with political overtones that described Ceuta as an occupied part of Morocco and a rush on its border a reconquest.

It was further fuelled by media reporting and by a simplified interpretation of a July ruling by Spain’s supreme court that led people to believe that if they crossed into Ceuta they would be brought to Spain and not returned to Morocco, according to an analysis by network and cybersecurity expert Marcelino Madrigal.

A study by technology company Golden Owl concluded “with high confidence that this was a deliberately organised, purpose-built and directed operation” and not spontaneous.

Some of those who made the crossing told international media they had been waved through by Moroccan border guards.

The incident was also preceded by another potential offence to Morocco: on July 20th, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez visited Rabat’s old rival, Algeria.

So was it a repeat of 2021? Did Morocco have a role?

Judging by the response from Spain, this time was different. From the outset, Madrid has said it was in “diplomatic dialogue” with Rabat and avoided commenting on any suggestion that Morocco could be to blame.

Spanish authorities stressed their co-operation with Rabat as they sought to avoid a repeat this weekend after similar calls spread on social media about a mass crossing on August 15th.

No tolerance was shown by Morocco on Sunday: riot police rushed into the hills around Ceuta and more than 100 people were arrested attempting to cross.

After the initial mass crossing last month, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warned that the EU would not accept any attempt to use migration to exert political pressure on a member state.

She did not specify who might be exerting this pressure, leaving open the possibility that other actors – criminal gangs? A third state? – could be involved.

A debate about the role of the Moroccan state – whether outright planning, encouragement or passive assent – remains unresolved.

“Morocco didn’t plan the raid, but it didn’t prevent it,” the independent Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet told Spanish public broadcaster RTVE, suggesting it was implausible that authorities did not have advance warning. “The Moroccan political police monitor all social media in Morocco.”

Mehdi Alioua, a sociologist at Sciences Po Rabat, has a different view. He told the French geopolitics journal Le Grand Continent that the incident was embarrassing to Moroccan authorities and that they were simply overwhelmed because it happened on the country’s national day, when the king makes a speech.

“It was impossible to distinguish who was heading to the beach, who was cheering the royal procession, and who was trying to cross the land border of the colonial enclave,” Alioua said.

Anyone who does cross into Ceuta has little chance of reaching Europe. The overwhelming majority of people who crossed have already been returned to Morocco.

Nevertheless, the images of the crossing had a power of their own.

They were enough to inspire imitation. Enough to embarrass prime minister Sánchez and galvanise his opponents. Enough to cause disunity and recrimination among European leaders.

And crucially, they were enough to broadcast that organised migration rushes are an effective tool to destabilise and influence European politics to whoever might want to try it next.

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