BORDER TENSIONS FAN FLAMES OF MIGRATION POLITICS

Crowds of migrants attempting to cross international borders have become familiar sights in recent years, with Syrians escaping civil war and Afghans fleeing turmoil being just two examples.

However, the crisis on the border between Belarus and Poland, where hundreds of migrants are camped in a freezing forest－several of whom have died－differs sharply from other such situations.

On Nov 16, in the worst clash to date in the tense standoff, hundreds of migrants stampeded a checkpoint and Polish troops fired water cannons and tear gas to quell them, The New York Times reported.

About 2,000 people, mainly from the Middle East, are estimated to be living near this border in dire conditions and are desperate to cross into the European Union.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for the second time in three days, part of a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at de-escalating the migrant crisis.

Lukashenko's media service said the two leaders reached "a certain understanding on how to move forward and solve existing issues".

Merkel's spokesman said the chancellor "underlined the need to provide humanitarian care and return options" for migrants stranded at the border, adding that UN agencies and the European Commission should be involved.

The talks between Merkel and Lukashenko follow a series of diplomatic contacts that raised tentative hopes that the crisis could be resolved.

However, the talks appear not to have helped. On Nov 16, some 100 migrants clashed with Polish forces in an attempt to force their way through the Bruzgi-Kuznica border crossing.

The Polish army detained dozens of migrants who crossed the Belarus border, and accused Belarusian special forces of masterminding the operation.

EU officials have accused Lukashenko's government of orchestrating the crisis in retaliation for the trading bloc's support for the Belarusian opposition. Last week, EU foreign ministers agreed on the legal basis for a new round of sanctions against Minsk.

Foreign ministers from the EU and G-7 global powers said, "We call on the government to cease immediately its aggressive and exploitative campaign."

Possible assistance

In an interview with the BBC released on Friday, Lukashenko said it is "absolutely possible" his forces helped migrants cross into Poland. He had been asked to comment on the Polish Defense Ministry's statement that Belarusian officers assisted illegal migrants to cross the border.

"We're Slavs. We have hearts. Our troops know the migrants are going to Germany," Lukashenko said. "Maybe someone helped them. I won't even look into this," he added.

"I told the EU I'm not going to detain migrants on the border, hold them at the border, and if they keep coming from now on, I still won't stop them, because they're not coming to my country, they're going to yours," he said.

"But I didn't invite them here, and to be honest, I don't want them to go through Belarus."

Lukashenko accused Polish law enforcers of violating the Belarusian border during clashes with migrants at the Bruzgi checkpoint.

"Do you know that it is even forbidden to point a weapon toward a neighboring territory? Why did you pour water with poisonous chemicals from water cannons 100 meters into our territory? This is a violation of a state border. You violated a state border, at the very least. You threw flashbangs on our territory," Lukashenko said.

Still, Belarus has said it wants to de-escalate the crisis.

On Thursday, Lukashenko's spokeswoman Natalya Eismont said there were about 7,000 migrants in the country.

She said Belarus would send 5,000 of them home and claimed that Merkel would negotiate with the EU on creating "a humanitarian corridor to Germany" for the 2,000 on the border.

A repatriation flight carrying between 200 and 300 migrants took off from Minsk on Thursday bound for Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, and Baghdad. The flight to Baghdad carried 431 people, Russia's Interfax news agency reported.

In 2015-16, more than 1 million people, primarily Syrians, poured into Europe. The resulting backlash buoyed right-wing nationalists across the continent, and since then, mainstream politicians have been reluctant to embrace immigration.

The number of migrants that have crossed or are waiting to cross the Poland-Belarus border is not so large when compared with the millions who fled Syria or Afghanistan, but the politics of migration are so volatile in Europe that even a small group can trigger tensions.

The New York Times said the right-wing governing party in Poland has long termed non-European migrants a threat to Polish culture and sovereignty, and its response to the current group has been predictably heated.

Six years ago, some countries, notably Germany, welcomed migrants, while others, including Poland, refused to accept more than a few, clashing with EU leaders. But there was no danger that the issue would develop into armed conflict.

Now, no one is offering to take the migrants, even as they experience life-threatening conditions. The EU is united behind Poland, which is portraying itself as the first line of defense for the bloc, while Warsaw and Minsk are trading ominous threats.

Legitimate fears

International accords define refugees as people with legitimate fears of violence or persecution, and give them the right to asylum. For many people, the governments in Syria and Afghanistan still pose a severe threat, but the conflicts there have quietened, while Iraq is now relatively secure.

Numerous people in Belarus and Poland left Iraq and Syria to seek economic opportunity, but they do not qualify for asylum.

Now, the migrants are trapped in a potentially lethal international clash.

There has also been an increase in contacts between the EU and the Belarusian leadership. In addition to Merkel's conversations with Lukashenko, the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has spoken twice to Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, and French President Emmanuel Macron has talked to Lukashenko's main ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But the EU has decided to impose new sanctions against some 30 Belarusian individuals and legal entities, including Makei and Belarusian airline Belavia.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said sanctions may also be placed on officials the EU views as responsible for the migration crisis on the borders between Belarus and EU countries.

Lukashenko has warned the EU to expect an influx of migrants attempting to seek asylum in the near future, as people leave Afghanistan following the takeover by the Taliban.

During his interview with official media outlet BelTA, Lukashenko said the current crisis may soon worsen considerably. "With the Taliban now at the helm in Kabul, many Afghan citizens are looking to Western Europe as a possible destination for asylum," he said.

"The Americans created immigrants, but ordered Europe and Central Asia to accept," Lukashenko added.

EU diplomats said the talks with Lukashenko's government stemmed from a sense that pressure was starting to build on him. European lobbying efforts to cut flights ferrying migrants from the Middle East to Belarus have begun to bear fruit, and Putin's public chiding of Lukashenko over a threat the latter made last week to cut Russian gas supplies to the EU was viewed as a sign of a possible shift in Moscow's attitude.

A senior EU diplomat said: "Putin has started to rein in Lukashenko publicly on the gas transit. He[Lukashenko] is under a lot of pressure and we are now possibly seeing the first signs of de-escalation from the regime."

This month, during an emergency parliamentary session after visiting troops on the border, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki publicly accused Russia of being behind the migrant crisis.

"This attack which Lukashenko is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow－the mastermind is President Putin," Morawiecki said.

Financial suggestion

The Kremlin did not make a strong response, but Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested the EU could provide financial assistance to Belarus in order to encourage the country to stop migrants crossing into the bloc.

Lavrov argued that the growing standoff was the fault of the EU, adding that Brussels' migration policies are responsible for a worsening humanitarian crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus.

Despite Moscow's ongoing support for Minsk, analysts cast doubt on accusations that Russia has contrived the migration crisis, saying Moscow's position regarding its neighbor is complex and often contradictory.

There is broad agreement among Russian experts that the migration crisis is an attempt by Lukashenko to force Europe to talk to him, and therefore to lessen his dependence on Russia.

Andrey Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, a Kremlin-aligned think tank, said, "Throughout this crisis, Lukashenko has been trying to force the West into dialogue."

This month, Lukashenko threatened to shut off the Yamal pipeline, which carries Russian gas through Belarus to Europe, causing concern for Moscow at a time when gas supplies to the EU are a sensitive issue.

In an interview with Russian state television, Putin rebuked Lukashenko for the pipeline threat, dismissing his Belarusian ally as "overly emotional".

Kortunov said Russia's contradictory actions throughout the crisis－signaling support for Lukashenko with military drills in Belarus, while also coordinating with European leaders to defuse the crisis－point to the Kremlin's complex position on Belarus, with the aim of keeping Lukashenko in office while preventing him from resuming his traditional independence.

"Lukashenko wants to put some distance between Minsk and Moscow and to increase his for maneuver independent of Russia. It would be strange if Putin supported him in that," Kortunov said.

However, some Russian experts feel that Lukashenko is becoming a liability for Moscow's interests.

Maxim Samorukov, a scholar of post-communist Eastern Europe at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said, "The main goal of Russian policy in Belarus isn't to annex Belarus, but to make sure Belarus doesn't move toward the West."

Analysts said this gambit is worth trying if it offers a chance of easing the crisis, the roots of which go back to August last year, when Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory in his bid for a sixth term in office.

Speaking to the Financial Times, the senior EU diplomat said: "Any conflict resolution requires a compromise. We can't solve it by not letting[Belarus] win something."

Estonian Foreign Minister Eva-Maria Liimets said that Lukashenko, during his first conversation with Merkel last week, demanded he be recognized as Belarusian president－which the EU had refused to do since last year's election－and that sanctions against his regime be lifted in exchange for ending the migrant crisis.

European officials said a wholesale removal of sanctions was unrealistic. However, the senior diplomat said a more positive outcome would be one in which the EU provided financial or logistical support to ease the humanitarian crisis.