Daily Times

BRUSSELS: NATO will send military vessels to the Aegean Sea to help Turkey and Greece crack down on criminal networks smuggling migrants and refugees into Europe, allied defence ministers said on Thursday.

The move, discussed by NATO ministers for the first time at a meeting in Brussels, is aimed at helping the continent tackle its worst migration crisis since World War Two, with more than a million asylum-seekers arriving last year.

Although the plan is still to be detailed by NATO generals, member states are likely to use ships to work with Turkish and Greek coastguards and the European Union border agency Frontex. “There is now a criminal syndicate that is exploiting these poor people and this is an organised smuggling operation,” U.S. Secretary of Defence Ash Carter told a news conference. “Targeting that is the way that the greatest effect can be had … That is the principal intent of this,” Carter said.

The numbers of people fleeing war and failing states, mainly in the Middle East and North Africa, show little sign of falling, despite winter weather that makes sea crossings even more perilous. A 3 billion euro ($3.4 billion) deal between the EU and Turkey to stem the flows has yet to have a big impact. Germany said it would take part in the NATO mission along with Greece and Turkey, while the United States, NATO’s most powerful member, said it fully supports the plan.

The alliance’s so-called Standing NATO Maritime Group Two has five ships near Cyprus, and Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the vessels would soon start to move into the Aegean, with more likely to be needed. Denmark is also expected to contribute a ship, according to a German government source. “It is important that we now act quickly,” German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said, adding that NATO’s involvement should act to deter traffickers.

Intelligence gathered about people-smugglers is likely to be handed over to Turkish coastguards to allow them to combat the traffickers more effectively, rather than having the NATO alliance act directly against the criminals, NATO diplomats said. NATO and the EU are eager to avoid the impression that the 28-nation military alliance is now tasked to stop refugees or treat them as a threat. Greek and Turkish ships will remain in their respective territorial waters, given sensitivities between the two countries, and any refugees saved by NATO vessels will be returned to Turkey.

Meanwhile, Greek Captain Argyris Frangoulis lifts his binoculars and with eyes fixed on the Aegean Sea horizon, steers his patrol boat out near the Turkish border to a dinghy full of stranded refugees.

He zeroes in on the target and gasps – “My God!” – another grey rubber motor boat packed with about four times as many people as it can hold, many of them young children and babies. “Everybody safe, OK?” he yells at the passengers, mainly Syrians and Afghans, approaching the coast guard vessel bewildered and in near-silence. “Stay calm and do not panic!”

About 50 people are pulled aboard one by one, smiling but too exhausted to speak. By the time they stagger wearily to the boat’s rear, a dinghy is spotted in the distance. Then another, and another, crammed almost entirely with women and children. By midday, the Agios Efstratios, a gunboat with 29-member crew who work in shifts, had plucked more than 600 people from sea and ferried them to the port of Lesbos, the island on the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis. From Greece’s islands, the refugees and migrants travel to the mainland and then to the northern border with non-European Union member Macedonia. Most of them are trying to reach Germany.

The influx has led some in the EU to accuse Greece of failing to make use of available EU funds and personnel to ensure people arriving in the Schengen zone of open border travel are documented. Some EU members have suggested Greece should be suspended from Schengen if it does not improve. But the criticism and threats have been met with anger in Greece. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday said the EU was “confused and bewildered” by the migrant crisis and said the bloc should take responsibility like Greece has done, despite being crash-strapped.

Most Greeks, including the coast guard, the army, the police were “setting an example of humanity to the world,” Tsipras said. For those at the frontline, foreign criticism is even more painful. “We’re giving 150 percent,” said Lieutenant Commander Antonis Sofiadelis, head of coast guard operations on Lesbos. Once a dinghy enters Greek territorial waters, the coast guard is obliged to rescue it and transport its passengers to the port. “The sea is not like land. You’re dealing with a boat with 60 people in constant danger. It could sink, they could go overboard,” he said.

More than a million people, many fleeing war-ravaged countries and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, reached Europe in the past year, most of them arriving in Greece. For the crews plying a 250-km-long coastline between Lesbos and Turkey, the numbers attempting the crossing are simply too big to handle. It is but a fraction of a coastline thousands of kilometers long between Greece and Turkish shores. “The flow is unreal,” Sofiadelis said. Lesbos has long been a stopover for refugees. Locals recall when people fleeing the Iraqi-Kurdish civil war in the mid-1990s swam across from Turkey.