“The sovereignty war in Western Sahara has caused a new wave of refugee smuggling in Spain?” Spain’s overseas autonomous city in Africa, Ceuta (Cueta), 17 evening suddenly landed without warning thousands of African smugglers, just in the evening 3 hours, more than 5,000 people swam across the sea, this number of smuggling not only set a new record of 250% of the highest single day in Spain; Moroccan border military police did not inform, do not warn, do not stop, but also let the Western government is very angry, suspected that Morocco The negative attitude of the Moroccan side is a “deliberate retaliation” against Madrid – but why the Moroccan and Spanish countries are suddenly at odds?
The key reason is that Spain secretly admitted a “mysterious COVID infected VIP patient” from the Western Sahara desert. The Autonomous City of Ceuta is Spain’s overseas enclave located in the northwest corner of the African continent. It is located at the southeastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar and is surrounded by Moroccan territory on all sides by land, except by sea. It has been under Spanish rule since the Middle Ages, and after Morocco’s independence in 1956, Spain abandoned most of its North African territories, but insisted on keeping Ceuta and Melilla to this day.
Although Morocco and Spain have had political disputes over the historical sovereignty and “decolonization” of Ceuta and Melilla for many years, the economic interaction between Ceuta and Morocco is still very close in terms of economic and trade flows. In the case of Mairia, for example, 35,000 Moroccan migrant workers commute to the Spanish enclave on a daily basis, and the various “single-job” European-African trade is one of the most important economic lifelines that Morocco relies on.
However, the Spanish enclave’s economic circle of life in North Africa has been interrupted by the Moroccan government’s blockade since March 2020 due to the “serious epidemic in Europe”. The interruption of nearly 15 months has not only paralyzed the enclave’s trade, but has also exacerbated Morocco’s economic recession and mass unemployment.
Spain’s overseas autonomous city in Africa, Ceuta (Cueta), suddenly landed thousands of African stowaways without warning in the evening of the 17th, within 3 hours of the evening alone, more than 5,000 people swam across the sea, refreshing Spain’s single-day record of 250%. Photo / Reuters
However, the pressure of unemployment on the Moroccan coast, although since February this year, a series of labor protests, calling on the Rabat authorities to “unblock Spain as soon as possible” to alleviate the plight of local Moroccan workers; but as far as the border situation is concerned, Morocco is still abiding by the “refugee control” to the European Union and Spain. But as far as the border situation is concerned, Morocco is still in compliance with its “refugee control commitments” to the EU and Spain, and neither Ceuta nor Mairia has seen a “spike” in smuggling – until a week ago, when the number of notifications of illegal entries at the border suddenly rose sharply.
For the past week, the generally quiet Ceuta and Myria have suddenly reported a continuous influx of “stowaways”. These African smugglers, in addition to taking advantage of the gap over the border fence, most of them take advantage of the low tide time, directly from the Moroccan border beach “swimming” or “wading on foot through the shallows” into the Spanish enclave. But this time the smuggling climb, usually only 30 people, the most only less than 130 people, but unexpectedly Monday evening cross-border crowd but “instant explosion”.
Spanish newspaper El País reported that the smugglers “swimming landing” from the Moroccan border, from the early morning of the 17th began to leave one after another. But thousands of people, “the main group of smugglers”, but between 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., taking advantage of the tide opportunity to cross the border. At one time, the coast of Ceuta is like a “sea highway” is stuffed with stowaways, no information received in advance, and no warning of the border police, completely powerless to stop the “landing raid” of this group of stowaways.
As of 11:00 p.m. on the 17th, the city of Ceuta estimated that at least 5,000 African smugglers had entered the country illegally – a number that is not only the “largest single day of smuggling” in the history of modern border control in Spain: compared to the 2,000 smugglers in the Canary Islands on a single day in November last year, the number of smugglers in the city of Ceuta was 1,000. The number is not only the “largest single day” in the history of modern Spanish border control: it is exactly 2.5 times higher than the 2,000 persons detected in a single day in the Canary Islands last November.
Spanish newspaper El País reported that the smugglers, who “swam in” from the Moroccan border, began to leave early in the morning of the 17th. But thousands of people, “the main group of smugglers”, but between 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., taking advantage of the tide opportunity to cross the border. At one time, the coast of Ceuta was like a “sea highway” filled with stowaways. Photo／European News Agency
About one third of the people who swam across the sea were underage men and women; at least one person was known to have drowned in the sea due to physical exhaustion, while a few of the rest who managed to land were “repatriated on the spot” by the emergency Spanish police, and hundreds of people were placed in temporary quarantine centers for “quarantine”. “But more escaped stowaways were directly scattered on the beach and disappeared into the industrial zone of Ceuta after “unaccounted for”.
Although Spain is now entering the “post-epidemic period” with the unsealing of the epidemic and the vaccination, the 5,000 African stowaways that entered the country in a short time still made the autonomous government of Ceuta extremely nervous, and in addition to deploying police officers to search and arrest them, it directly requested the central government of Madrid to send troops and police officers to “Emergency reinforcements”.
However, while Spain is anxious to catch people, Madrid has angrily revealed to the media that it is highly dissatisfied with Morocco’s “deliberate release of refugees from the border” and suspects that this “big smuggling” farce is clearly a “diplomatic retaliation” by the Rabat authorities against The Spanish government’s “diplomatic revenge”.
“Morocco did it on purpose, they wanted to take revenge on Spain for the ‘secret medical treatment’ of the secessionist leader of Western Sahara!
About one-third of the people who swam across the sea were underage men and women; at least one person is known to have drowned in the sea due to physical exhaustion, while a small number of the rest who managed to land were “repatriated on the spot” by the Spanish police force that was urgently reinforced, and hundreds were placed in temporary quarantine centers for “quarantine”. “But more escaped stowaways were directly scattered on the beach and disappeared into the industrial area of Ceuta after “unaccounted for”. Photo / Reuters
The 5,000 African stowaways that entered the country in a short period of time made the autonomous government of Ceuta extremely nervous, and in addition to deploying police officers to search for them, it directly requested the central government of Madrid to send troops and police officers for “emergency reinforcements”. Photo / Reuters
Photo／European News Agency
Spain and Morocco’s diplomatic row began in late April this year. At that time, the Moroccan media suddenly issued an exclusive report, accusing the Spanish government of “malicious interference in Morocco’s internal affairs”, suspected of secretly treating the “Western Sahara rebel leader” Brahim Ghali who was infected with COVID-19. Brahim Ghali.
Ghali, 71, is the secretary general of the Frente Polisario, an independent force in Western Sahara, and the president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) – a self-proclaimed The Frente Polisario, which considers Western Sahara to be sovereign and independent, has been seeking “independent statehood” since the late 1970s; however, neighboring Morocco and Mauritania have simultaneously claimed sovereignty over Western Sahara.
The three parties were engaged in a “desert war” for more than 15 years until 1991, when they accepted a ceasefire mediated by the United Nations, but the referendum on Western Sahara’s independence and self-determination remained stalled, and the Kingdom of Morocco never fully abandoned its position on Western Sahara.
The “truce standoff” between the Frente Polisario and Morocco lasted until December 2020, when the Kingdom of Morocco suddenly relaunched the desert war on the grounds that “the Frente Polisario had attacked Moroccan construction workers with terror”. At the same time, then-President Trump, with the help of his son-in-law Kushner, unexpectedly recognized “Morocco’s legitimate sovereignty to rule Cesar” – a moment of international chaos that allowed Morocco to take advantage of the situation. But the desert war, unknown to the global epidemic, has since spread.
While the conflict in Western Sahara continues, Algeria, the “backer” that has long supported the PFDJ and intended to use it as a counterweight to Morocco, has continued to support the Sahrawi independence movement, even sheltering PFDJ’s 71-year-old leader, Gali. This spring, Gali was infected with COVID-19, and his illness was said to be serious, so Algerian intelligence agencies secretly arranged for him to “go abroad for emergency treatment”.
Gali, 71, is the secretary general of the Frente Polisario, an independent force in Western Sahara, and the president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Photo / Reuters
The serious illness of Gali, is rumored to have been arranged by Algeria on April 21, with a “fake passport” to enter the northern Spanish province of La Rioja for medical treatment – because the identity of the member is sensitive, seriously ill with the epidemic, the epidemic when Spain has strict immigration control. It was impossible for an ordinary Algerian citizen to enter the country for medical treatment in such a situation, so the special admission of the whole case was obviously “approved at the highest level” by the Spanish State Security Unit and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
However, the news that Gali had entered Spain under a false identity to seek medical treatment became known to the Moroccan spy network – within three days, the news that “Spain had taken in the head of the Cesar rebellion” spread through the media; the Moroccan central government summoned the Spanish ambassador on April 25. In addition to expressing its strongest protest, the Spanish ambassador threatened the Madrid authorities.
“If you continue to intervene in Morocco to calm the rebellion… We will take the strongest ‘revenge’.”
It is for this reason that the May 17 “Ceuta smuggling incident” was recognized by Spanish public opinion as “a deliberate act by Morocco”.
Last year’s war in Western Sahara. Photo／AFP
Spain’s Interior Ministry and Foreign Ministry privately complained to the national media that the Moroccan border city of Fenidik was already full of “cross-border refugee groups” before the Great Ceuta Smuggling, but the Moroccan Interior Ministry and border police not only failed to inform Spain beforehand, but also withheld information while the Moroccan police were The Moroccan police are “extremely passive” and have no intention of stopping the smugglers from crossing the sea, but instead they stand by and silently encourage thousands of refugees to “swim into Ceuta”.
The Moroccan government’s deliberate attitude has irritated Spanish public opinion, because it is one thing to treat the PFDJ leaders, but people are not necessarily cured, and Spain also has its humanitarian reasons and diplomatic pressure; however, in the epidemic situation, Morocco has clearly received the “anti-smuggling resettlement subsidy budget” allocated by Spain and the EU. How dare it say it’s a sham and intend to weaponize the refugees as a diplomatic retaliation against the first-tier allies?
The Moroccan government has denied the responsibility of “anti-smuggling” and said that it does not know where these thousands of smugglers came from. Morocco will maintain its goodwill in diplomatic cooperation by only emphasizing the follow-up repatriation and border control, but will more refugees be “deliberately released” in the future? What does Morocco want for Gali, who is seriously ill with the disease? In the midst of the border chaos of the smuggling fiasco, it also makes this diplomatic conspiracy seem particularly realistic and ruthless.
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