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Strategic Engineered Migration as Weapon of War
Looking at the [resemt situation in the EU with millions of migrants flooding in, why did they take such a huge risk to make this journey. One reason, is they were “nudged” by social media, which has a track record of overthrowing governments and mobilizing millions of people. It’s by design and if you don’t believe me, here are some highly educated people saying the same thing; it’s now being used as a weapon:
After reading the title, you may think it is describing the phenomenon that Europe has recently been facing: the hundreds of thousands of refugees, both victims of the hardships of civil wars and opportunists, who are invading the Balkans by land and by sea and then making their way further, trying to reach richer countries like Germany, France and Scandinavia by any means possible.
It would seem that this stream of refugees has objective reasons: armed conflicts and wars have been going on in Libya, Syria and Iraq for many years, while the situation is also turbulent in Palestine and Afghanistan. In Tunisia and Egypt, meanwhile, both of which experienced the Arab Spring, the situation also leaves much to be desired. Hardly anybody is taking notice of Bahrain, where opposition protests have been brutally suppressed for years, while in Yemen, air strikes are even being carried out on wedding processions. The location of these two states is not very convenient, however – there is simply nowhere to flee. There is also another important detail: camps are being built for Muslim refugees in Saudi Arabia, but nobody is going there for some reason. As a last resort, they stay in Jordan and Turkey.
Is there also some general reason for their frantic desire to flee so far from their homeland? Wealthy relatives who have already settled in the European Union, perhaps? Or stories about welfare benefits on which they will be able to live comfortably? After all, to make such a journey they have to pay handsomely for the services of smugglers. According to some reports, these smugglers take between $4,000 and $10,000 to transport a single refugee from Syria or Libya to Europe. Even if this person has wealthy relatives abroad, receiving money via bank transfer is impossible in war-torn Syria. Organising transportation on credit clearly involves certain guarantees, especially considering that the boats often sink in the Mediterranean.
Who is providing guarantees that encourage hundreds of thousands of people to rush from other continents to Europe and why?
Researchers have discovered a very interesting fact related to the use of social networking sites. It has come to light that calls on Twitter for refugees to travel to Germany have mostly come from the US. The time spent practising in other countries has not been in vain – from Iran during the 2009 presidential elections to Egypt and Tunisia, where the role played by social networking sites in mobilising the population was considerable.
What we are seeing now is the practical implementation of theoretical calculations of a strategic nature. Such strategies have been under development for a long time. One of them is a study by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University that bears the name «Strategic Engineered Migration as a Weapon of War», which the author also uses for the title of this article. The study was first published in 2008 in the Civil Warsjournal. Using a combination of statistical data and case study analysis, the author of the work, Kelly Greenhill, provides answers to the following questions: can refugees be a specific type of weapon, can this weapon only be used in wartime or in peacetime as well, and just how successful can its exploitation be? On the whole, Greenhill answers these questions in the affirmative.
