Unraveling of European Union deepens crisis for Mideast refugees

BY MAGGIE TROWE

One result of the coming apart of the old imperialist Mideast order and growing divisions born out of the conflicting interests of the individual states in the European Union is the deteriorating situation faced by millions of people forced from their homes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. This includes more than 52,000 people trapped in crowded Greek refugee detention camps after officials in Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia sealed their borders.

Many refugees and immigrants trying to enter Europe are stuck in camps on Greek islands where they landed, such as Lesbos, Chios, Kos and Samos, located close to Turkey’s Aegean coast. Under a March 18 accord between the European powers and Ankara, Turkey began accepting migrants deported from Greece. Some 325 people were returned the first week.

The imperialist governments’ actions pit workers of different nationalities against each other. Syrians are still considered for asylum and settlement in Europe, in a very slow process. But since February immigrants from war-torn Afghanistan are not.

Fights broke out among nearly 1,000 Syrian and Afghan asylum-seekers at a detention center in Chios April 1, leaving five people seriously injured. Cops allowed the melee to go on for six hours before intervening. About 800 people then broke out of the camp and marched to the port, where they set up tarps and tents. They were attacked April 7 by some local residents shouting anti-immigrant slogans and hurling small firebombs, and police forced most of them to move to a nearby shelter.

At Piraeus, Athens’ tourist port on the Greek mainland, a recent fight between young Syrian and Afghan men lasted three hours. Some 4,600 refugees live in tents and warehouses at the port, and the social democratic Syriza government wants to get rid of them before Orthodox Easter May 1, the beginning of the peak tourist season.

“Do not lose your courage, we stand by you, we love you,” read a government flyer distributed in Arabic, Farsi, Greek and English to migrants. Then it threatened, “The port of Piraeus cannot host you any more and you have nothing to win by remaining here. In a few days the port of Piraeus will be emptied (evacuated).”

Athens is in the process of selling Piraeus Port Authority to Chinese shipping giant COSCO in the second large privatization move carried out by the Syriza government since last year. Dockworkers struck and marched in Athens April 8 protesting the sale and the job losses they anticipate as a result.

In Idomeni, Greece, a small town on the Macedonian border, a group of refugees, including many women and children, held a demonstration and sit-in on railroad tracks, demanding to be allowed to cross the border, the Greek press reported April 8. Thousands of people, including some 4,000 children, live in unsanitary conditions in the camp there.

Millions displaced in Syria, Iraq

The partial cease-fire brokered by Washington, Moscow and Tehran allows the government of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, aided by Russian airstrikes, to continue its attacks on Nusra Front, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda. Other opposition groups have been hit as well.

In Iraq, thousands of civilians fled heavy fighting April 8 in the Islamic State-occupied town of Hit in Anbar Province, which Iraqi government forces are fighting to retake.

Some 12,000 families have returned over the past month to parts of Ramadi that have been cleared of land mines set by Islamic State forces before they were driven out of the city by Iraqi government forces in December. Half a million people used to live in the city, which the war has reduced to rubble.

The military campaign pressed by Washington and its allies to retake the city of Mosul in northern Iraq from Islamic State has made little progress. Iraqi regular army forces outside of Makhmour haven’t been able to oust 100 to 200 soldiers of the brutal Islamist group, in spite of Washington’s airstrikes and shelling by a U.S. Marine artillery contingent on the ground.

The fighting has forced many civilians to flee. More than 2,000 people have overwhelmed a camp in Makhmour that the Iraqi army is not prepared to maintain. Many of the refugees, the majority of them Sunni, distrust the largely Shia government and militias. “The Iraqi army had no plan for us and we’re 2,000 people,” Abu Noor, a teacher from a nearby village, told a Wall Street Journal reporter at the camp. “What will they do with Mosul? That’s two million!”

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