The idea of population displacement as a means of coercion is not as arcane or uncommon a form of warfare as one might think. There is actually a considerable amount of research compiled which demonstrates how weaponised migration has been utilised particularly in the 20th century and right up to the present day to achieve political goals, including overwhelming a countries capacity to take in such a large influx of foreign people or through simply creating political chaos within the society itself.

For the purpose of this article we will be tailoring our focus to the period after WWII up until the present day. As we shall see, the use of migration has been rendered far more effective in many respects in this era than was possible previously. One example is the rise of globe spanning non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) and international bodies which impose legal obligations on sovereign nations regarding how they are allowed deal with migration and human rights, amongst other things.

Weapons of Mass Migration - Kelly M. Greenhill

A 2010 book written by Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Tufts University, Kelly M. Greenhill, titled, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy, has been referenced frequently in recent years as events have unfolded after the so called “Arab Spring” and the resulting “migrant crisis” that affected Western Europe. Greenhill is also a Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. This work deserves more specific attention for it’s content but for now we wish to merely outline the phenomenon of weaponised migration and put it in context so we can understand the way nations or regimes can be undermined using such tactics.

Why is Migration so Effective?

Acknowledging 56 cases of what she defines as “coercive engineered migration” post WWII, with about half successful (they broadly achieved their objectives) and potentially 8 more “inconclusive” examples, Greenhill lays out a veritable manual for state and non state actors to use in order to minimise the need for more traditional warfare strategies. Instead, population groups are moved to a specific area in order to destabilise and inflict various kinds of penalties on the target country or government, while avoiding many of the costs, economic or otherwise, associated with more traditional warfare tactics.

Indeed, such instigators often get to play the role of humanitarian while chastising or even making veiled threats to their targets, maybe even reaping a public relations windfall in the process while the target society deals with numerous destabilising effects. A recent example of this phenomenon are the threats made by Turkish President Recep Erdogan who has consistently made demands on Europe to provide political and economic support or risk an even greater migrant wave into the EU’s comfortable, welcoming welfare states.

For example, after making an agreement with the EU in March 2016 regarding keeping migrants located in Turkey inside of Turkey in exchange for aid and expedited EU membership Erdogan had no qualms about turning the screw on the feckless European leaders. In a speech in Istanbul in 2016 Erdogan made his intentions to use the migrants situated in Turkey against the EU, stating,

“You clamoured when 50,000 refugees came to Kapikule (Bulgarian border checkpoint with Turkey), and started wondering what would happen if the border gates were opened…If you go any further, these border gates will be opened. Neither I nor my people will be affected by these empty threats”.1

The extent to which the European establishment are personally against such migration seems minimal considering their policies and actions during the migrant crisis and intense PR campaigns2 to placate the native Europeans but the political costs can be very high, regardless of the bombastic public pronouncements of politicians who have become victims of their own rhetoric. Erdogan, the quintessential strong man Islamic leader who’s reputation precedes him3 meant business and the EU leaders knew this well enough.

Further evidence of Erdogan’s intent to weaponise the migrant wave as well as Turkish people already living in Europe can be gleaned from the fact that Erdogan threatened to stop the readmission of migrants to Turkey who had been denied the right to stay in Europe. This, Erdogan claimed, was due to Germany, the Netherlands and others denying his foreign minister the right to land in the their countries to hold political rallies for elections back home in Turkey. Erdogan also claimed that there was a “crusade” against Islam in Europe, branding a European Court of Justice decision to allow private businesses to ban religious symbols in the workplace as fomenting “a clash between the cross and the crescent”.4

These statements may have had some merit if Turkey was not a serious violator of the rights of minority religious groups rights, particularly under the rule of the Islamist Erdogan himself.5

In order to understand the activities of people like Erdogan, we will use Greenhill’s scholarly Weapons of Mass Migration analysis to explain this phenomenon and the associated effects.

The 3 Types of Engineered Migration – Dispossessive, Exportive & Militarised

The current trend toward limiting critical talk of migration to western nations should not be allowed to prevent our delving into the effectiveness of such cynical tactics, indeed, this is one of the reasons they are so effective. If we learn about such means then we can stop their use and in turn stop a malicious practice that causes much harm. Migration can function as a devilishly effective means of creating the geo-political situation required, so let’s look at just why that is. According to Greenhill’s research, coercive engineered migrations are often,

“undertaken in the context of population outflows strategically generated for other reasons. In fact, it represents just one subset of a broader class of events that all rely on the creation and exploitation of such crises as means to political and military ends-a phenomenon I call strategic engineered migration.”6

Greenhill identifies three categories to group these strategic migration events based on the reason they are undertaken:6

  1. Dispossessive engineered migrations – are designed to appropriate a groups territory or to remove a group from competition with another. This category includes ethnic cleansing.
  2. Exportive engineered migrations – are designed to eliminate political adversaries or to destabilise a foreign government etc.
  3. Militarised engineered migrations – occur during armed conflict in order to gain advantage over an enemy.

Of course the instigators of a migration may in fact create a larger movement than they had anticipated on. Such a situation can actually damage both countries. The Berlin wall was itself constructed due to increasing migration from east to west occurring in the early 1960’s, when East German’s became more and more aware of the differences on each side of the divide, threatening the existence of the GDR government.7 Such a movement of people can be very useful to any organisation looking to collapse a regime deemed illegitimate such as North Korea or perhaps even Syria when western media and leaders such as Angela Merkel made major attempts to accommodate migrants from this country in western Europe.

In part Twelve of this article we will see how the East German government created their own “migrant crisis” for the West German government in the 1980’s by flying asylum seekers in from the Middle East and giving them visas that entitled them to enter the west, creating leverage for themselves to extract concessions.8

Of course, the instigators may also lose control of a migration due to having to rely on “irregulars” or

“even bands of thugs, who lack discipline and whose objectives may not be synonymous with those who instigated the outflows. Likewise, once migrants and refugees find themselves outside their states of origin, they are often capable of autonomous actions – they might move in different directions and do so in smaller or larger numbers than challengers desire.”9

When we look at events in the Mediterranean over recent years with the use of smugglers and human trafficking networks operating with the almost open acceptance of governments who themselves could be accused of creating a “pull factor”, by processing these migrants for asylum after picking up the boats offshore, we may be looking at a deeper agenda at play. There are even substantial claims that some NGO’s were openly working with the smugglers to coordinate their efforts.10 This will be a subject for another time however.

We could say a lot about each of these categories of engineered migration but it should be apparent the differences between them. The key information to glean is that migration is frequently employed during both war and peace times in order to achieve strategic objectives which may not always appear to be obvious.

Furthermore, coercive engineered migration occurs within three broad categories of migration, dispossessive, exportive and militarised. The camouflaged nature of such population movements often renders it difficult for many to see the political reasons it is happening. This does nothing to reduce the effectiveness of such migrations and in fact makes it arguably more effective than it may otherwise have been.

Who are the Instigators? – Generators, Agent Provacateurs & Opportunists

  1. Generators – are easily recognisable and tend to be weak relative to their targets. Idi Amin and Fidel Castro have been generators at various times in the twentieth century. This category includes undemocratic leaders who deliberately use migration due to military shortcomings.
  2. Agents provocateurs – are of the same weak position as generators but do not tend to create the crises themselves, rather they have an “end justifies the means” mentality. They also tend to be viewed as victims and can elicit moral outrage over perceived injustices waged against them. Often such actors will look to elicit a hard line, refugee generating response by an enemy in order to get political or diplomatic sympathy. The Algerian insurgents used such tactics against France in the 1954-1962 French-Algerian war. The Kosovo Liberation Army also used these tactics in the late 90’s against Yugoslavia. 11
  3. Opportunists – may seek to use small scale crises or even create crises themselves in order to achieve political goals using lobbying or publicity campaigns. Such outflows are frequently involved in regime change operations. Activist and NGO’s are frequently involved in such activity, for example North Korea who was struggling with famine, used the threat of large scale migration very effectively against China and South Korea in particular in the nineties. The North Korean regime subsequently found itself in the cross-hairs of a western backed NGO’s and activists who attempted to create a real migrant wave to bring the regime down by encouraging migration and simultaneously using diplomacy and media attention to force the Chinese and South Koreans to accept the migrants as refugees with a right to asylum.12

“With humanitarian ends, if not means, in mind, NGO’s and activists often play the role of agents provacateurs. Sometimes that role is as a primary challenger, as was the case in North Korea in the early 2000’s, and sometimes the role is as a supporting one, as during the Bosnian Civil War.”13

North Korea – A Case Study in “Opportunistic” Engineered Migration

Greenhill dedicates a chapter to the study of the North Korean case and this is because it encapsulates so many of the categories of instigators, as well as displaying the shameless capacity for NGO’s to exploit human suffering in order to alter a political situation. It also involved the coordination of these NGO’s activities with the western media. For example, a series of “embassy crashing’s” were staged in which North Korean migrants would be encouraged to enter foreign embassies internationally and demand asylum. All the while the cameras of CNN and the western media would amplify the effect of the stunt to a western audience caught up in moral indignation at the cruelty of the national embassy if they did not accede to the demands.14

These tactics developed over the nineties and new millennium have been perfected furthermore during the Arab Spring to such a degree that the audience watching at home can be completely unaware of the real events happening in any given country but can be absolutely convinced of the necessity to bring migrants into western Europe without delay. Such shallow thinking has been encouraged and renders society incapable of understanding the true nature of events and even more dangerously, leaves many people convinced that anyone who wishes to question these pre-packaged narratives is a moral inferior.

The key information to take on from this is that there are three categories of instigator, Generators, Agent Provocateurs and Opportunists. The first two categories tend to be weak in comparison to their opponents and migration is one of the only means through which they can obtain victory over a larger, typically more liberal minded foe through the use of migration. The third category of Opportunists often are third parties from outside who may seek to dismantle a regime by encouraging people to leave.

I believe there may be an element of this opportunism at play in the migrant crisis along with numerous other agendas at play, considering the presence of the United States regime change NGO’s in the Middle East just as they were in North Korea in the nineties. As with North Korea, the situation in Syria has a decades long geopolitical story arc that is usually forgotten in favour of more immediate concerns regarding how to deal with the migrants, yet another reason why migration has become so effective as a coercive instrument over recent decades.15

How Weaponised Migration is Used to Manipulate Governments

According to Greenhill, coercers have five common means through which to manipulate the leadership of their target using weaponised migration.16

  1. Power base erosion – where a regime loses it’s main support
  2. Unrest – where dissatisfaction is promoted in the body politic
  3. Decapitation – where a regimes security is threatened
  4. Weakening – where the nation is weakened all round
  5. Denial – preventing a regime winning an armed conflict

These are easily understood, even though Greenhill claims that “weakening” and “denial” are “off the table” due to the non-military means utilised in engineered migration. I would disagree however in this regard. For example when we look at Syria, we see that the flight out of the country was mainly made up of young military aged men who did not want to fight for the Assad regime17 and who were in fact emboldened in their desire to come to Europe by the leaders of western governments such as Angela Merkel18 and the NGO’s who facilitated their travel by completing the smuggling process in the Mediterranean.19 20

There is a much deeper geopolitical story to be told here but it requires detailed treatment elsewhere, suffice to say, the uniform response and consistent media messaging surrounding migration in general and more specifically the migrant crisis primarily associated with Syrians, is highly dubious in my view. The mass movement of migrants from Syria was detrimental to the Syrian governments chances of survival, the constant media campaign also weakened the regime in the western mind. Syria also lost vital soldiers and young labour to help rebuild the country, those young people were instead ferried into Europe to improve the demographic statistics of European nations with young workers which international organisations such as the IMF frequently call for.21

The Two Strategies That Undermine a Government – “Capacity Swamping” & “Political Agitation”

Instigators look to create political chaos and impose penalties on the target in order to make them accept their demands. Greenhill states,

“There are two distinct, but non-mutually exclusive, pathways by which migration-driven coercion can be effected using punishment strategies; loosely speaking, they might be thought of as “capacity swamping” and “political agitation.” Simply put, capacity swamping focuses on manipulating the ability of targets to accept/ accomodate/ assimilate a given group of migrants or refugees, whereas political agitation focuses on manipulating the willingness of targets to do so.”22

In the developed world, political agitation is the more frequent method of coercion.

“Specifically, challengers on the international level seek to influence target behaviour on the domestic level by engaging in a kind of norms-enhanced political blackmail that relies on exploiting and exacerbating what Robert Putnam has called the “heterogeneity” of political and social interests within polities.”23

This essentially means that the diversity of opinion in a society can be manipulated and used to bring a regime to heal due to social unrest. Diversity is certainly less of a strength than it is a weakness in this context. Putnam, a highly regarded political scientist from Harvard University, has conducted research regarding the effects of diversity on societies, much of which is contained within his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Greenhill continues,

“Exploitation of heterogeneity within Western states is possible because population influxes, such as those created in migration and refugee crises, tend to engender diverse and highly divisive responses within the societies expected to bear the brunt of their consequences.”23

Societies then split into two obvious camps and often more besides, regarding how to deal with the influx. Greenhill explains how the two broad camps tend to be highly polarised and call for generally short-term respones such as accepting anyone who might come regardless of the costs or on the other side of the scale, denying all who attempt to enter. Demands will be made to grant these groups citizenship and the eventual family reunification will multiply their numbers very quickly 24

The problem for the host society is an obvious one, one cannot please the pro-migrant groups in society by pleasing the anti-migrant camp and vice versa. If a regime wishes to maintain it’s demographic stability and avoid the upheaval of finding a place for people often from very different ethnic or cultural groups they risk the wrath of the pro-migrant groups. Governments in the developed world often lean towards the pro-migrant camps due to the efforts of the civil society NGO’s who operate with vast amounts of funding and access to politicians. This international network frequently takes it’s cues from organisations such as the UN which has a major bias towards promoting migration as can be seen in it’s Global Compact for Migration, which sees migration as a human right and a process that is generally only positive for all involved.25 Additionally, the International Organisation for Migration list one of their objectives as “facilitating migration”.26

We will deal with the power of international institutions and NGO’s later in the article. The key information to remember regarding how migration is used to attack governments is that it has 5 main objectives at any given instance, most often “power base erosion”, “unrest” & “decapitation”. Additionally the government is trapped and blackmailed using the two main weapons of “political agitation” and “capacity swamping.”

How International Law Disables the Ability of a Government to Act

The reality of global institutions defining international laws that are in turn promoted vigorously by networks of activists, academics, politicians, charities etc. is not a subject we can address in the detail required here but suffice to say there are a number of basic principles and international regulations that are prescient when we look at what hamstrings a government’s ability to deal with weaponised migration.

Greenhill picks out the post war United Nations (UN) and it’s Declaration of Human Rights as what gave rise to the ever developing international migration standards governments are forced to comply with today. Greenhill is essentially describing the rise of what is often referred to as civil society institutions and their ability to steer governments to their liking. They often prey on short term minded politicians who fear bad publicity more than anything else, as well as the narcissistic desire to be looked at favourably by the writers of history. Not many wish to have their names sullied as people like Enoch Powell or other critics of what has become a cult like agenda have been previously.

“These networks and their allies – members of the media, academia, legislature, and ethnic and political interest groups – rely on two factors in particular to exercise domestic influence over leaders in support of international norms. The first is leaders’ desires to remain popular, either due to short-term electoral considerations or because of longer-term concerns about how they will appear in the context of history.”27

Politicians who go against this institutional legal power structure also risk the chance that their policies lack sufficient support or “legitimacy”.

“The second is policy legitimacy. Policies that prescribe strategies or tactics that violate norms can threaten policy legitimacy and thereby severely limit support for those policies in the legislature or parliament, in the media, or in the public at large”.27

The ability for a government to assert itself against migration is severely curtailed through the erection of international legal standards that are defined at a supranational level by people that do not have to answer to an electorate. This form of soft authoritarianism expresses itself on the national level and renders dissenters impotent to push back without severe ramifications for their political careers or reputations. Most people have witnessed what happens when a politician or celebrity espouses views that are critical of immigration, often a person’s name is dragged through the mill by former colleagues. Frequently, people lose jobs and all manner of penalties are wielded. This is where we see the soft power of civil society turn into an iron fist as networks of activists, media personalities and NGO’s pile on a target in a attempt to destroy them and terrorise other dissenters. For a personal story from a target of this kind of attack, see Irish author and journalist John Waters tell all account of his career in the Irish media, Give us Back the Bad Roads.

The Tyranny of “Non-Discrimination” & “Right to Asylum”

The principle of non-discrimination, originally referenced as a means to stop racial discrimination or violence has been utilised as a means to prevent any person from any part of the world from being denied asylum or even citizenship in whatever nation they might desire, regardless of the feelings of the native population.

“Although the nature and scope of migration-related legal and normative commitments vary across states, generally speaking the human rights regime has put two major limits on state discretion as it pertains to policy legitimacy: the right of asylum and the principle of racial non-discrimination, both of which have matured into customary international law that is binding on states.”27

The most broadly recognised manifestations of these norms can be found in the 1948 Human Rights Declaration, the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees, and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.“28 We must also consider the more recent UN attempts to normalise further migrations since that time, such as the recent Global Compact for Migration29 which has been so controversial that some countries actually refused to sign it, including the US.30

Although the UN said the compact is not legally binding, it does in fact create a legal framework according to many legal experts, including Belgian international law professor Pierre d’Argent, as well as German law professor Matthias Herdegen.31

Reflexive Law vs Formal Law

The means by which these “non-binding” guidelines and agreements come to influence sovereign governments is sometimes referred to as “reflexive law.” Reflexive law is different to formal law and legal documents based thereon such as a countries constitution. Essentially it is law derived for global application and is based on the idea of self regulation. Essentially the law moves from being rigid and laid in stone to an ever evolving organism which is constructed by the various stakeholders.32

This is a prerequisite to creating a global system of regulations and is designed to help global institutions and corporations to conduct their business and avoid falling foul of national laws. It is frequently associated with environmental regulations and sustainable development. One major issue regarding reflexive law is that the stakeholders aren’t evenly balanced and it tends to follow that the ones with the most power call the tune, be they NGO’s or global institutions rather than the everyday people who will bare the brunt of this legalistic creep.

This has been a brief introduction to the means through which governments are constrained by international regulation and the rise of globe spanning institutions. In essence our story regarding migration can be traced quite neatly to the UN and it’s Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and since then the machinery of civil society which became preponderant since the 1970’s with organisations such as Amnesty International having set in motion a juggernaut of financial, legal and political force that has rendered sovereign nations incapable of resisting it’s control.

The Vulnerability of Liberal Democracies – Imposing “Hypocrisy Costs”

Can western governments become victims of their own liberal rhetoric when it comes to dealing with weaponised migration to their nations? In the case of public pronouncements of moral superiority and adherence to liberal ideals or universal human equality, the answer appears to be, yes. Greenhill has coined the term “hypocrisy costs” to define the “force multiplier” effect of a governments inability to simultaneously deal with a migratory wave in an effective way while simultaneously being seen as a moral actor, due at least partially to their use of politically correct language and making verbal commitments that are incredibly difficult to deliver upon in reality. This goes hand in hand with the rise of international law discussed previously, whereby governments must bow to the international commitments that they have signaled their support for.

“The first factor-a consequence of what is often referred to as normative or embedded liberalism-is that the majority of liberal democracies have codified commitments to human rights and refugee protection through instruments such as the 1948 Human Rights Declaration, the 1951 Convention, and the 1967 Protocol. These international conventions and associated domestic laws not only provide a set or normative standards against which the actions of actors can be judged but also place certain legal obligations on states to meet the responsibilities they impose.”33

It hardly requires explanation that politicians frequently make careers out of saying things that are designed to please people and win public support. In the modern era politicians have increasingly become reliant on pleasing particular interest groups in order to prolong their careers. One misplaced statement or pronouncement can produce a career ending incident, be it criticism of a protected group or any statement that goes against the agendas of the aforementioned civil society NGO’s who hold a figurative gun to their heads. Of course there are also true believers who have religious devotion to the ideals of a borderless world and whose public persona is often based around advocating for “minority” interests, typically white and affluent liberals with what has been termed a “white saviour complex” toward out-groups.34

Less democratic or liberal societies rarely have these problems but the societies who are most vulnerable to this kind of trap tend to be secular, liberal and situated in the west. Outside of this ideological bubble the rest of the world seems rather more prone to xenophobia and cultural chauvinism. You won’t find the Chinese leadership pontificating whether they are being compassionate enough toward the outsider. The Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who had a prominent role in aiding the mercenaries who attacked Syria, had no problems refusing to allow the Syrian migrant wave into their countries, even though they have considerable facilities and cultural/ religious similarities. 35Interestingly, the gulf states were quite happy to encourage the migrant wave into Europe while offering to build mosques to culturally colonise the west.36

How “Civil Rights” Are Weaponised by Pressure Groups

Greenhill defines “hypocrisy costs” as being “operationalised in a manner akin to what human rights network advocates call “accountability politics.” In their study of cross-border pressure groups, Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink explain this kind of international campaign,

“once a government has publicly committed itself to a principle…networks can use those positions, and their command of information, to expose the distance between discourse and practice. This is embarrassing to many governments which may try to save face by closing that distance.37

A similar strategy is used in getting governments to back environmental conventions or codes of conduct.38

Of course, it isn’t always humanitarian minded activists who utilise these tactics,

“having failed to achieve their objectives through traditional channels of influence, challengers may resort to the creation or exploitation of refugee or migration crises. The existence of said crises may encourage targets to behave in norms-violating ways as they attempt to avoid bearing the burdens and incurring costs, associated with running afoul of anti-refugee/ migrant groups within their societies. Then, if normative violations do in fact follow, hypocrisy costs can be imposed by domestic and international pro-refugee/ migrant groups seeking to protect those under threat, or even by challengers themselves.”39

In many countries the legislative process has become so dominated by a network of activists and NGO’s that politicians are genuinely terrified of taking a stand against them. Any politician who dares challenge this imposed orthodoxy will be targeted in a number of ways, many of them viciously personal and others that are designed to destroy their political careers. On the other hand, politicians who have learned to work with this network have achieved prestige in the media as well as having lucrative careers opened to them when they leave politics. Once a politician has made political statements in favour of international agreements regarding migration or the validity of right to asylum claims, they are ripe to be accused of hypocrisy and vilified when presented with cases that they deem to be non genuine later on.

How East Germany Imposed “Hypocrisy Costs” on West Germany During the Cold War

In terms of coercive engineered migration, an example of imposing “hypocrisy costs” can be seen in the case of West Germany, who found themselves under attack from East Germany through the use of migrants from the early 80’s. The communist East German government cynically advertised in the muslim dominated Middle East and South Asia for migrants who wished to come for easy access to the west. They were given transit visas to enter West Berlin, with thousands taking the Soviet bloc airline flights directly to East Berlin.

The East Germans extracted significant aid and concessions from the West, who were forced to push back on their liberal rhetoric when public opinion turned aggressively against the entry of thousands of new arrivals. During the Cold War, the west German regime was keen to espouse liberal rhetoric that left them wide open to be targeted in this way.8

We can see how this same trap has ensnared western nations today in Angela Merkel’s pronouncement that migrants from Syria should come to Germany on 2015. It didn’t take long for Merkel to feel the political pressure from the competing pro-migration and anti-migration factions who battled to try and influence the government one way or the other.

Conclusion

This has been an introduction to a phenomenon that is a hugely important concept to come to terms with. This article has dealt with weaponised migration and other related concepts such as NGO’s and the application of international agreements and laws as they can be utilised by forces seeking to use migration in this way. Weaponised migration likely makes up a portion of the influx into Europe in recent years, particularly migration associated with the “migrant crisis”, but other reasons explain much of the other influx of migrants outside of this such as agreements that have been made between western countries and the Arab world etc. These will be dealt with elsewhere.

Postscript – Erdogan Unleashes the Migrant Wave in 2020

I am writing this last paragraph today on the 4th of February 2020 as Erdogan and his Islamist regime unleashes waves of migrants on Greece and the EU generally. I feel vindicated having written about him in the context of weaponised migration albeit the fact that I am sorry to see such a thing happening. The migrant wave now resembles a standing army and armed with propaganda help from the media/ NGO complex it is being used to pressure Europe for more concessions such as EU membership, having broken their deal to accept money and aid to hold the people indefinitely. The Greeks are used to dealing with Ottoman bullies such as Erdogan and seem determined not to accept more than the massive numbers they have already but Western Europe’s leaders are falling into the same traps discussed in this article which is worrying. One thing is for sure however, if people could learn about this important subject then the likes of Erdogan and the Turkish regime could not use such tactics ever again.

  1. Tulay Karadeniz, Nick Tattersall, “Erdogan warns Europe that Turkey could open migrant gates,” November 25, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-europe-erdogan-idUSKBN13K0R6.[]
  2. European Commission, “Improving access for cities to EU integration funding”, 2018 https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/inclusion-migrants-and-refugees/improving-access-cities-eu-integration-funding.[]
  3. Veli Sirin, “The Real Erdogan”, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3713/recep-tayyip-erdogan.[]
  4. BBC, “Erdogan threatens to scrap EU-Turkey migrant deal,” March 16, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39294776.[]
  5. Pew Research Center, “Trends in Global Restrictions on Religion,” June 23, 2016, https://www.pewforum.org/2016/06/23/trends-in-global-restrictions-on-religion/.[]
  6. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 14.[][]
  7. Berlin website, “The construction of the Berlin Wall,” https://www.berlin.de/mauer/en/history/construction-of-the-berlin-wall/.[]
  8. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 309.[][]
  9. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 36.[]
  10. RT, “Italian prosecutor accuses NGOs of colluding with human traffickers in Libya,” April 23, 2017, https://www.rt.com/news/385806-italian-prosecutor-ngos-collude-smugglers/.[]
  11. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 27.[]
  12. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 232.[]
  13. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 28.[]
  14. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 239.[]
  15. For an introduction to the geopolitical reality belying the mass movement of people out of Syria as well as evidence that western powers were involved in training and arming the terrorists responsible for creating the war there see: Washington’s Blog, “Syrian Regime Change: A 70-Year Project,” April 17, 2018, https://www.globalresearch.ca/syrian-regime-change-a-70-year-project/5636433.[]
  16. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 37.[]
  17. Rebecca Collard, “These men say they’re leaving Syria because they don’t want to fight anyone,” January 13, 2016, https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-01-13/these-men-say-theyre-leaving-syria-because-they-dont-want-fight-anyone.[]
  18. Philip Oltermann, “Mama Merkel: the ‘compassionate mother’ of Syrian refugees,” September 1, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2015/sep/01/mama-merkel-the-compassionate-mother-of-syrian-refugees.[]
  19. Abigail Klein Leichman, “IsraAID sends team to help refugees in Europe,” September 3, 2015, https://www.israel21c.org/israaid-sending-team-to-help-refugees-in-europe/.[]
  20. Bethan McKernan, “Charities saving refugees in the Mediterranean are ‘colluding’ with smugglers, Italian prosecutor claims,” April 24, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-boat-rescue-charities-medicins-sans-frontieres-save-the-children-mediterranean-sea-migrants-a7699571.html.[]
  21. Katie Allen, “Refugees hold key to German economic growth, IMF says,” May 9, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/09/germany-imf-economy-growth-refugees-migrants-labour-ageing-population.[]
  22. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 38.[]
  23. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 40.[][]
  24. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) (Cornell University Press, 2010), 40.[]
  25. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “Bring global migration compact ‘to life’, urges UN chief,” December 18, 2019, https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/international-migrants-day-2019.html.[]
  26. International Organisation for Migration, “About IOM,” 15 January, 2020, Ohttps://www.iom.int/about-iom.[]
  27. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 47.[][][]
  28. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 48.[]
  29. UN – Refugees and Migrants, “Global compact for migration,” January16, 2020, https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/migration-compact.[]
  30. Oliver JJ Lane, “World Follows Trump’s Lead: Nations Abandon Legal ‘Framework’ Building UN Migration Pact,” November 22, 2018, https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/11/22/world-follows-trumps-lead-nations-abandon-legal-framework-building-un-migration-pact/.[]
  31. Chris Tomlinson, “Law Professor: UN Migrant Pact May be ‘Non-Binding’ But Will Create Legal ‘Framework’,” November 22, 2018, https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/11/22/law-professor-un-migrant-pact-non-binding-creates-framework-legal-arguments/.[]
  32. Patrick M. Wood, Technocracy Rising, (Coherent Publishing, 2015), p129-.[]
  33. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 60.[]
  34. Faima Bakar, “What is a white saviour complex?,” March 6, 2019, https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/06/what-is-a-white-saviour-complex-8793979/.[]
  35. Amira Fathallah, “Migrant crisis: Why Syrians do not flee to Gulf states,” September 2, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34132308.[]
  36. John Hayward, “Report: Saudis to Build 200 Mosques for Migrants in Germany,” September 10, 2015, https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/09/10/report-saudis-to-build-200-mosques-for-migrants-in-germany/.[]
  37. Keck and Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders, Cornell University Press, 1998, 24.[]
  38. Keck and Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders, Cornell University Press, 1998, 25.[]
  39. Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2010), 53.[]