A common theme is emerging in the tragic story of the refugees and migrants trying to enter Europe: These despondent folks pay thousands of dollars to human traffickers to reach their destinations, but some of the smugglers abandon their “customers” in the middle of the sea or in some isolated forest, sometimes to certain death. As reported by Al-Monitor last month, 430,000 people successfully made the trip in the first eight months of this year, while at least 2,700 drowned or went missing in the Mediterranean Sea. That anyone would pay such vast sums and risk their lives, even after losing their homes and livelihoods, is remarkable, begging critical examination of the dynamic and raising a number of questions: Could European governments cut into the smuggling trade by eliminating the middlemen and transporting refugees and migrants themselves? Would such an approach allow migrants and refugees to get a better start in their host countries and benefit the local economies? Would such an orderly flow of people into Europe solve or at least ease the continent’s refugee crisis? The answer to these questions is “yes,” but implementing them comes with several caveats.
Europe had a human smuggling problem even before the word “Syria” became synonymous with one of the worst human-made catastrophes in recent history, driving millions of people from their homes. A retired Turkish intelligence officer who worked on organized crime in the late 1990s told Al-Monitor that just as with any other product or service, the laws of supply and demand have driven human smuggling for quite some time. Before 2011, people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia paid thousands of dollars and euros to smugglers who could get them to European countries.
