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Rouba El Husseini and Lisa Golden, Agence France-Presse
BEIRUT, Lebanon — For desperate Syrians, a WhatsApp message saying “I want to go to Europe” may be all they need to begin a perilous journey to Libya and then across the Mediterranean.
Twelve years after the conflict erupted when President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protests, Syrians are still trying to escape a war that has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and attracted foreign powers and global jihadists.
At least 141 Syrians were among 750 migrants believed to have been on board a trawler that sailed from Libya and sank off Greece in June, relatives and activists told AFP. Most of the passengers are feared drowned.
AFP interviewed Syrian smugglers and migrants about the journey to Libya, a migrant hub notorious for rights abuses, and then across the central Mediterranean – the world’s deadliest migration route.
Almost everyone requested anonymity, fearing reprisals.
“A lot every month”
“We finalize everything over the phone,” said a smuggler in Daraa province in southern Syria.
“We ask for a copy of their passport and tell them where to deposit the money. We don’t need to see anyone in person,” he told AFP via WhatsApp.
Daraa, the cradle of the Syrian uprising, returned to regime control in 2018.
It has since been plagued by killings, clashes and dire living conditions, all of which are fueling an exodus, activists say.
“The first year we started, we only sent one group. Today, we send a batch every month” to Libya, the smuggler said.
“People are selling their homes and leaving.”
Libya descended into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the same year the war in Syria began.
The North African country is divided between a UN-recognized government in the west and another in the east backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, who has ties to Damascus.
Syrians deposit the money – more than $6,000 per person – with a third party, often a bureau de change that takes a commission.
The smuggler refused to disclose his cut, but said he was paid once the migrants arrived in Italy. His partner in eastern Libya organizes the actual boat trip.
“Humiliated, beaten”
A travel agent in Daraa told an AFP correspondent posing as a migrant that a package cost $6,500.
This included a flight ticket, entry document to eastern Libya, airport pick-up, transportation, accommodation, boat trip to Italy and a life jacket , said a WhatsApp message.
Migrants stay “in a hotel or furnished apartment”, he added, but Syrians said such promises were rarely kept.
They told AFP of overcrowded, disease-ridden warehouses, where armed guards subjected migrants to violence and extortion.
Omar, 23, from Daraa province, borrowed $8,000 to be smuggled to Libya and then Italy this year, saying he was desperate to leave “a country with no future”.
Now in Germany, he said he spent two weeks locked in a hangar near the coast in eastern Libya with around 200 other people.
“We were abused, shouted at, humiliated and beaten,” added Omar, who said the guards only gave them meager portions of rice, bread and cheese to eat.
On the day of departure, “about 20 armed men forced us to walk” the distance between the hangar and the sea, “beating us with the backs of their guns”, he said.
“When we finally reached the shores, I was exhausted. I couldn’t believe I had made it.”
Among the mercenaries
In a part of northern Syria controlled by rebel groups backed by Ankara, a recruiter of fighters said he also smuggled migrants to Libya by enrolling them among the pro-Turkish mercenaries.
Turkey supports the Tripoli administration in western Libya.
Ankara has largely shut down a once well-trodden route to Europe via Turkey.
“Every six months, we use the rotation of fighters to send people with them,” the recruiter told AFP.
Syrians in the impoverished opposition-held northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, “especially those living in displacement camps, contact us,” the recruiter said.
Listed as “combatants”, Syrian migrants are entitled to a Turkish “salary” of around $2,500, the recruiter said.
The armed group pockets $1,300, the recruiter takes the rest and the migrants get a free flight to Libya, he said.
The Syrians first travel to border camps for pro-Ankara fighters before crossing into Turkey and flying to the Libyan capital Tripoli.
They spend two weeks in Syrian militia camps in western Libya before being introduced to smugglers, who charge around $2,000 for the boat trip to Italy, he added.
‘To hide our tracks’
For those in Syria under regime control, traveling to Libya may involve criss-crossing the Middle East on various airlines and sometimes by land – “to cover our tracks”, the Deraa smuggler said.
AFP saw a bundled ticket for around 20 Syrian migrants who traveled to neighboring Lebanon, then flew from Beirut to a Gulf state, then to Egypt, before finally landing in Benghazi, in the east of Libya.
Direct flights are also available from Damascus to Benghazi with Syrian private carrier Cham Wings.
The European Union blacklisted Cham Wings in 2021 for its alleged role in irregular migration to Europe via Belarus, lifting the measures in July last year.
Several Syrians told AFP that on their flights to Benghazi, direct or not, there were many migrants bound for Europe.
Spokesman Osama Satea said Cham Wings only carried travelers with valid Libyan entry documents, noting the presence of a sizable Syrian diaspora there.
He told AFP that the airline is not responsible for determining whether passengers are traveling for work or other reasons, but “it certainly does not fly to Libya to contribute to smuggling attempts or migration”.
“There was terror”
Syrians arriving in Benghazi need security clearance from eastern authorities to enter.
But the Daraa smuggler told AFP that was not a problem: “In Libya, as in Syria, paying security officials can solve everything.”
“We have a guy in the security appliance that gets permissions with a click,” he said.
Migrants told AFP that an associate of a smuggler – sometimes a security guard – escorted them out of Benghazi’s Benina airport.
A security clearance seen by AFP bore the logo of Haftar’s forces and listed the names and passport numbers of more than 80 Syrians bound for Europe.
Once in Libya, Syrians can wait weeks or months for the most perilous part of the journey.
More than 1,800 migrants of various nationalities have died crossing the central Mediterranean to Europe this year, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.
Around 90,000 more have arrived in Italy, according to the UN refugee agency, most having embarked from Libya or Tunisia.
A 23-year-old man from Kobane, held by Kurds in northern Syria, was among about 100 survivors of the June shipwreck off Greece.
He paid over $6,000 for a trip that nearly cost him his life.
“There was terror,” he said.
Six people died in desperate fights for food and water, and “on the fifth day we started drinking sea water”.
“I wanted to leave the war behind me, live my life and help my family,” he said from Europe, warning others against the trip.
“I was promised decent accommodation and a safe trawler, but got nothing.”
© Agence France-Presse
