Who still remembers the “road of the Canary”? It’s the key to understand the Refugees Crisis in Europe and its solutions. In the mid-2000s, West African migrants trying their luck on overloaded fishing boats, from the Senegalese coast, to reach the Spanish archipelago, gateway to Fortress Europe. Two thousand kilometers from Atlantic Ocean to cross. Hundreds of corpses drifting, missing or stranded on beaches in the Canaries. A peak was reached in 2006: 31 000 migrants greeted somehow, and probably 6000 deaths, by the admission of the Spanish authorities.
That’s when Madrid and Dakar decided to cooperate and find solutions: specific migration with “legal” quota, sending patrol boats and a helicopter to the Spanish coast; last but not least the strengthening of development aid, tens of millions of euros given to Senegal (also in Mali, Guinea, Cape Verde …) for education, training, micro-enterprise development , among others. The “Road of the Canary” will disappear in two years, Spain is considered as an example by Brussels.
Helping the countries of origin of migrants can be a solution. But today, faced with the huge current wave of migration, it is no longer valid. The so-called migrants ‘economic’ were added mass political refugees – and how to tell the difference: wars do not they create misery? – Daech fleeing the Syrian conflict, the Libyan chaos, the atrocious Eritrean dictatorship … In desperate, Europe looks for solutions, at least to try to accommodate these migrants. In the urgency and division: some shout their “Willkommen” while others erect barbed wire. As to stem the sources of this wave, it may take time … It would eradicate Daech, to remove Bashar Assad while stabilizing Syria, to dispose of Eritrea Isaias Afewerki of the satrap, to try to negotiate peace in Libya, divided between its many militias …. Suffice to say: mission impossible.
