« October 7, 1571 |
Main
| Admitting Defeat
A Bit More on Ceuta and Melilla »
October 07, 2005
Spain - Defending the Walls of Europe
The recent human wave assaults (known as "avalanches") by large groups of mainly sub-Saharan Africans on the fences surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta(1) have a fascinating Camp of the Saints-like quality. On the night of October 5-6th another avalanche took place, resulting in 6 more deaths and goading the regime of Socialist Prime Minister Zapatero into finally promising to expel all those who actually make it past the double fence which separates the Spanish cities from Morocco.
Conservative critics have charged Zapatero with having encouraged the attempts through his recent mass "regularization" of illegal immigrants in Spain, as well his previous refusal to expel those individuals who succeed in crossing the barrier.
While news coverage has generally focused on the desperate plight of those attempting to enter Spain, the connivance of Morroco in the crisis has been largely ignored by the media. Spanish conservatives, however, have denounced the failure of Morocco to prevent the attacks. Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy accused Morocco of failing to comply international law by preventing the mass border crossing attempts. He said the Spain should "demand" that Morocco "comply with international law and make it do so." (From El Telegrama de Melilla)
Others, on the Spanish far-right, are much harsher. Ernesto Mila, a former leader of Democracia Nacional(2), writes in his blog Infokrisis:
Why does Morocco - a feudal police state, where there exist neither rights nor liberties - allow its territory to be crossed by easily recognizable legions of the desperate who wind up camped out at the frontier of Melilla? Why do the Moroccan police - one of the most brutal and unscrupulous forces conceivable - not break up those camps and repatriate the residents?
... these questions have a simple answer: the Moroccan government does nothing, or even encourages this gathering of illegals, simply because it does not consider it to be its problem and believes that the more immigrants arrive in Spain, the more Spanish society is weakened: the internal problems which appear, xenophobia and racism, the creation of ghettos, an absolutely unendurable tax burden, the impoverishment of Spain's working classes, etc, all contribute to weakening Spain which is, and do not forget this, in Morocco the Northern enemy! (Emphasis in the original)
Regardless of the truth of Mila's claims, however, the situation is obviously a win-win for Morocco. At a minimum, the avalanches harrass and embarrass Spain and raise the cost of maintaining Ceuta and Melilla. The Moroccan daily L'Opinion suggested last week that this might be the opportune time to turn Ceuta and Melilla over to Morocco and therby eliminate this whole unpleasant problem. (HT Mangan's Miscellany.)
Spanish conservatives, as well as the residents of Melilla and Ceuta fear that Zapatero may wish to do just that. When asked at a recent news conference about his feelings on shared-sovereignty proposals, he failed to answer. He has also refused to allow representatives of the two cities to attend Spain-Morocco summit meetings, including the most recent one which dealt with the current crisis. In response, some 2,500 people demonstrated in Ceuta on October 5th, chanting "Ceuta is Spain", "Ceuta is not for Sale" and "Ceuta United will Never be Defeated".
Even if these events do not lead Spain to make significant concessions on Melilla and Ceuta however, Morocco has also been working hard to use the situation to obtain a massive increase in aid from Spain and the rest of Europe.
According to the Morocco Times:
EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said the bloc is ready to provide Morocco with financial aid to deal with the phenomenon as long as Moroccan authorities agree to take back any illegal immigrant who crossed to Europe through the Moroccan borders with the two Spanish enclaves.
This follows an announcement made at the late September Spanish-Moroccan summit that Spain would grant:
€165 million [in] financial aid to support the Moroccan National Initiative for Human Development (NIHD), launched by HM King Mohammed VI in May...
As Americans demand that the our government establish real control over our borders, this Moroccan-Spanish border crisis is an important example of just how difficult this can be. Facing an incomparably longer border to control, equally desperate immigrants and an equally corrupt government to the south, it's hard to imagine that our experience, should we be lucky enough to find ourselves with elected officials with the will to really control illegal immigration, will be any easier.
(1) Ceuta and Melilla are cities on the North African coast, which have formed part of Spain since 1497 in the case of Melilla and 1580 in the case of Ceuta (which had been a Portguese possession beginning in 1415). Together they have a population of about 150,000. Morocco, which considers the cities to be occupied territory, has been seeking an end to Spanish control of them.
In recent years immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa have traveled to Morocco in an attempt to enter Spain illegally. Until this year, most hoped to be smuggled across the Mediterranean. However many others have chosen to rush the fences surrounding Melilla and Ceuta in groups of up to 1,000, carrying crude ladders to use in climbing over the double row of 20 foot-wide fences topped by razor wire and patrolled by members of Spain's Guardia Civil and, now, soldiers as well. While there had been a handful of such attempts in the late-90's, there have been 27 assaults so far this year, involving a total of more than 11,000 individuals, according to one estimate. The number of illegal immigrants currently held in Melilla is estimated to be 2,000, with an unknown number in Ceuta.
(2) For more on Democracia Nacional (in Spanish), see the Wikipedia entry which is informative but a bit out of date, given the organization's internal problems which have led to the resignation or expulsion of many members, including a number of party leaders. DN and the Spanish far-right in general is an interesting topic which I hope to come back to one of these days.
The graphic at the beginning of this post was also borrowed from the DN website.
Posted by John at October 7, 2005 07:19 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry: