If you zoom in to Morocco, you'll see a tiny wedge of land that stands out from
its surroundings. This little bit of land is surrounded by one of the most
fortified borders on the planet.
Right outside the border you'll find makeshift
forest camps, where people spend their days and nights evading the police and
preparing to rush the border, usually in large groups, with hopes of jumping over
and stepping foot on this land.
This peculiar scene plays out because this piece of land, while in the
continent of Africa, is actually a piece of Europe.
This small piece of land is called Melilla. It's one of two Spanish enclaves in
Morocco, marking the only borders that Europe shares with the continent of Africa.
Spain conquered Melilla in the late 1400s as part of its rapid global expansion.
This region of northern Africa changed hands many times over the
following decades, but Spain kept hold of Melilla.
Even in 1956, when the colonial
period was winding down and great powers were ceding their colonies, Morocco had just
declared independence, but even then Spain held onto its enclave.
Today, around 86,000 people live in Melilla and when you're there you might as well
be in mainland Spain. The city is designed with the distinctive Spanish
architectural style and residents speak Spanish. They pay in Euros.
You're only reminded that you're not in mainland Europe when you walk to the peripheries
of this city, to find one of the most fortified border walls on the planet.
A seven mile barrier with layers of protection
The first layer is a 20-foot metal fence, followed by a second fence with a
flexible top, which makes it harder to climb. Below this second fence you have
barbed wire netting, strong and dense webs, then comes another taller fence
with a flexible top section and more barbed wire. Then you're on the Moroccan
side where, you have a 6.5 foot ditch and then a double fence with
you guessed it, more barbed wire. There are lookout posts and every inch of the
border is monitored by video surveillance.
To understand why this
barrier exists, you have to cross over into the Moroccan town of Nador and
then into the forest in the hills surrounding the enclave.
These migrants are mostly from sub-Saharan Africa and they all have
different motives for leaving their homelands.
They gather in these camps and
plan for the day when they'll try to cross into Melilla.
In response to this intense security, the migrants have
developed a technique that relies on overpowering the border guards with
strength of numbers.
The groups range in size, but are nearly always in the
hundreds. Most get caught right away on the Moroccan side where they face border
agents who are not shy about using force. Those who make it past the first few
layers, onto the Spanish section of the barrier are also thrown back immediately
or detained, but because of their large numbers a few will inevitably slip past
the guards. As soon as they put their feet on the ground in Melilla, they are
technically in Europe and are guaranteed certain protections under European Union law.
But they still have to run a hundred meters to an immigration center, where
they can be taken in and given protection from immediate deportation.
Arrivals to these enclaves came to a head in 2014, when Spain decided it was
finally time to double down on its effort to fortify this border. This was
mainly in response to the influx of migrants attempting to get into Europe,
fleeing from conflicts in Africa and the Middle East.
"Biggest wave refugees in modern history"
"hundreds of thousands of refugees"
"fleeing brutal violence in the Middle East"
"cross over European borders by the hundreds of thousands"
"in overcrowded boats, many drowning along the way"
Spain's response to this migration
crisis was to focus on the borders of its enclaves in Africa, redoubling the
efforts to keep migrants out of this little slice of Europe. The year after
the 2014 migration crisis, attempts to jump the fence dropped by 67%.
Spain didn't make these numbers drop on their own. One of the things you'll notice when
you look at this wall, is that Moroccan military and police are also guarding
this border. The year of the migration crisis, Morocco built these two extra
layers of barbed wire fencing.
"But authorities say dense new anticlimb mesh
stopped the latest to make the attempt in their tracks"
So why would Morocco
take the responsibility of building a barrier and standing guard at Spain's border?
Turns out they have real incentives to do so. Morocco has what's
called advanced status partnership with Europe, which gives them economic and
political advantages in trade and political affairs. The European Union
accounts for more than half of Morocco's international trade and the EU also
provides Morocco with billions of Euros in aid for security and development, so
the Moroccans in an effort to stay on good terms with their northern neighbor,
take on the job of protecting Spain's border. And they take their job very seriously.
Migrants had always had their forest camps right here, right outside the city on this hill.
This was their camp for years and this is the place where they used to regroup
and prepare a jump, until just a few months ago when the Moroccan military
set up an outpost up here.
Now the migrants can't return and they have gone
to find another refuge, which is on a hill 12 kilometers from here. Moroccan authorities
have started routinely raiding the camps.
But they don't deport them from Morocco, they have other less
resource-intensive ways of keeping these migrants from coordinating a large
enough group for a jump. The police were here for three hours this morning, they
basically came in and stole a bunch of stuff, they kind of disrupted these tents
and messed with these people's houses. They harassed the women in violent ways.
They basically came here just to flex their muscles and say you know we're in
charge, make sure you remember that.
About once a month the Moroccan authorities
round up the migrants and send them to other parts of Morocco that are far away
from Melillah, preventing them from gathering in a sufficient group to blitz the fence.
The Moroccan authorities are not concerned with keeping these
migrants out of Morocco, they're trying to keep them from getting to Europe.
They do in many respects, a lot of Spain's and Europe's dirty work, with respect to
blocking people whose interest is to cross.
Another thing you'll notice is
that everyone in these camps is from sub-Saharan Africa, basically countries
below this line.
All migrants face extreme difficulties in their journey to
Europe, but migrants from places like Syria have a much easier time just
walking up to the border and asking for asylum the proper way.
It's not an exaggeration to say that hardly any sub-Saharan African is able to do that.
They do have to resort to very dangerous methods, like scaling the
fences or hiding in vehicles or taking to the sea.
Spain did build a new
office to handle the influx of migrants, but not migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.
You might say well that's reasonable right? Everybody
knows there's a war in Syria, so of course it makes sense to presume that
Syrians are fleeing the war and they're refugees, they need protection.
But the flip side of that, the presumption that people from countries
where there isn't like a live war, that you are reading about in the newspapers,
the presumption that people from those countries are not in need of
international protection, is a very dangerous presumption.
The world is experiencing a record number of refugees and displaced people. While some
countries have opened their doors to let these people in, many are responding by
building walls, but this won't stop them from coming. No matter how dangerous the
journey, the people in these camps will keep trying.
That's the six episode of Borders, I hope you've enjoyed this series. Today we also
launched the on-site experience for all six of the Borders stories, with graphs
and charts and visualizations to kind of go a little bit further into some of
these stories. I'm gonna leave a link here where you can go see that and thank
you for being a part of this journey.
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