The sun rises over tents pitched at the Idomeni refugee camp on the Greece-Macedonia border in March 2016. (MATT CARDY/Getty Images)

Unequal to the task

Much of the misery, chaos, and confusion could have been avoided had the EU been able to reach consensus on anything beyond shutting down borders. For months, the hopelessly overwhelmed Greek authorities were left to try to sort out the problem for themselves — although, as French Ambassador Sellal pointed out to me, the Greeks stubbornly resisted help so as not to give the impression that they had surrendered control over their own borders. Greece was so hopelessly unequal to the task of processing the vast tide of newcomers that at one point the refugees seeking to apply for asylum could do so for only one hour a week, by Skype, when an Arabic speaker was available.

By the time I reached Lesbos, the EU had begun to mobilize to bolster the Greek effort. Officials from what is called the European Asylum Support Office were interviewing refugees in Lesbos, Chios, and Samos and were expanding to other islands. The EU border control agency, known as Frontex, was helping the Hellenic Coast Guard patrol offshore waters. After 20 years of debate, the European Parliament had just approved a 1,500-person border and coast guard agency that, unlike Frontex, could deploy in emergencies even when local authorities did not request or even want it. The EU had finally begun using its resources to do something other than close borders.

And yet so few asylum officers had arrived — not even a dozen in Lesbos — that they barely made inroads into the backlog of required interviews. Scarcely anyone from the camps was either going forward to the European mainland, or backward to Turkey. The EU-Turkey deal rests on the broad principle that refugees should be able to seek protection either in the first country of asylum or in a safe third country. And the EU has accepted that Turkey is a safe country for the purposes of international protection. That’s one of the reasons for the hue and cry: Turkey has turned some refugees back into Syria and kept others from entering. Nevertheless, Turkey has given shelter to almost 3 million Syrian refugees at a time when most European countries have taken only a handful. Turkey’s camps are modern and safe, and the 90 percent of refugees who live outside the camps have generally been free from mistreatment.

Yet very few of the refugees now stuck in Greece have been returned to Turkey or are likely to be anytime soon. First of all, the only non-European refugees who enjoy formal legal protection in Turkey are Syrians. For this reason, non-Syrians are not being sent back to Turkey. That’s why none of the Afghans, Pakistanis, or Iraqis I met at Kara Tepe have yet received an interview to determine whether or not they can be sent to Turkey. But Syrians considered vulnerable to mistreatment, whether because they are women or children or because they belong to a group that is persecuted in Turkey like Kurds, are also exempt from return. And those Syrians who are found eligible for return to Turkey enjoy the right under Greek law to appeal the decision with the help of a lawyer. This process is so cumbersome that to date no Syrians have been involuntarily returned to Turkey. The Turks, meanwhile, have sent only a few hundred Syrians to Europe for readmission as refugees. The “one-for-one” arrangement, with Syrians going from Greece to Turkey matched by those going the other way, exists almost only on paper.

The refugees’ goal, of course, is the security of Europe. Those who are considered “admissible” to Greece after hearings conducted by U.N. officials are then supposed to have their application for asylum in Greece administered by Greek officials. But because that system is overwhelmed, very few Syrians, and even fewer non-Syrians, have actually had their applications heard. And so the refugees sit and stew and wonder what kind of conspiracy is operating against them.

The EU’s side of the deal was to administer the funds to help Turkey provide a decent life for the refugees. A number of European countries have hesitated to disburse the funds pledged, fearful that the money might never reach the intended beneficiaries. The failed coup in Turkey has only deepened that worry. As of this writing, less than €500 million has been distributed. The needs are overwhelming. Only 39 percent of Syrian children in Turkey are now enrolled in school. Vincent Cochetel, the director for Europe at UNHCR, observed that “access [to] education is key for the parents in their decision to stay or move on.” If children aren’t going to school, or adults aren’t allowed to find work, he said, the refugees will start heading for Europe once again.

The deal itself is hardly ironclad. As part of the compensation for serving as Europe’s refugee sponge, Turkey insisted on achieving its long-sought goal of visa liberalization, meaning that Turkish citizens would be able to travel visa-free in Europe for up to 90 days. The EU agreed but only after Ankara reached a series of benchmarks governing political and economic behavior. Turkey’s draconian anti-terrorism law, which plainly violates European standards, has emerged as the most intractable obstacle. And the violent crackdown in the aftermath of July’s failed coup attempt has raised a storm of protest in Europe. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, has begun threatening to let the deal collapse if Europe doesn’t pay the full €3 billion while his senior officials have reminded their counterparts in Brussels that visa liberalization is a nonnegotiable condition.

While more than 12,000 refugees languish on Greek islands, another 54,000 have been stuck in camps on the mainland since the Macedonian border closed. (Greek authorities have begun sending some refugees from the islands to the mainland camps, which in general are no better.) They cannot be returned to Turkey because they crossed through before the deal was signed. They can be sent elsewhere in Europe according to the deal reached in September 2015, which will “relocate”160,000 refugees from their European port of entry — i.e., Greece or Italy. Here, too, progress has been agonizingly slow; to date, EU countries have taken only 6,000 refugees through the relocation process.

A number of EU members, including France, have publicly committed to taking many more refugees than they have so far. But those promises shouldn’t be taken at face value. French President François Hollande is facing an election this coming spring, and his chief opponent, former President Nicolas Sarkozy, has relentlessly hammered away at the government’s policy regarding immigrants and terrorism. Hollande is not likely to risk his position yet further by taking large numbers of Syrian refugees.

That political reality, blandly enough acknowledged in European capitals, is a source of agony for those stranded in Mytilene; that, after all, is what Timmermans meant when he said, having spent time in the camps, he cannot accept the narrative that the crisis is over.

Clothes hang on barbed wire at a makeshift refugee camp close to the border between Serbia and Hungary in September 2016. (ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images)

The damned

While I was in Kara Tepe, a young man came up to me and asked if I would come find him later in “51” — his house number. When I asked where he was from, he grinned and said, “You’ll see with your own eyes.” In a place where almost everyone seemed on the edge of despondency, Atoo Yazidi appeared almost theatrical. He had a lick of dark hair falling over his brow, limpid brown eyes, and a trimmed beard. I took him for the camp jokester. In the stifling heat of 51, he pulled out a big sign on which he had scrawled: “Yazidis no life without international protection.”

Atoo saw that sweat was pouring off me, and we went out into the shade, where he began to unfurl a series of rolled-up paintings. Accompanied by the childish drawings he had made, he told me his story. I realized, to my shame, how wrong my first impression had been.

One drawing showed arrows, representing Islamic State fighters, surrounding Mount Sinjar, the heart of the Yazidi homeland in Iraq, as the jihadis prepared their campaign of extermination on the night of Aug. 2, 2014. Atoo, then 26, was living with his family in a town southwest of the mountain. He and all his male relatives fought from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. that following morning with whatever weapons they had before retreating up the mountain with the rest of the Yazidi community. A key on one side of his drawing listed the casualties — 1,500 dead in Atoo’s town, 1,000 more on the mountain, 1,500 who died trying to break out to the southeast. (The death toll was later put at 5,000.) He did not include the thousands of women taken as slaves.

Atoo and his wife, along with the 50,000 remaining Yazidis, were finally saved by a combination of American airstrikes and a daring rescue effort by Syrian Kurdish fighters. Atoo escaped into Syria and then spent a year and a half working for an NGO in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Dohuk. He earned enough money to cross into Turkey, paid $1,400 to a smuggler, and reached Lesbos on March 29.

But that wasn’t even the worst part of Atoo’s story. Before fleeing, his wife had seen the Islamic State slaughter her neighbors. “She was no farther away than you are from that toilet,” Atoo said — some 20 feet. She had had a breakdown. On the escape into Syria, he said, she had “fallen down 30 times.” She was living with him in the camp, but their unsettled life had only made her condition worse. Five days before we met, a friend told Atoo that his wife was standing in the road outside the camp, trying to commit suicide. He raced out in time to see her saved and now was spending his days by her side in the hospital. Atoo felt that they were just holding her there, with no plan for treatment. That evening, when I returned to my hotel, the night manager said that he had been driving past Kara Tepe and seen a terrible sight — a woman standing in the middle of the road holding a knife to her throat. It was Atoo’s wife. Another woman, also a passing stranger, had calmed her just enough for a man to creep up behind and grab the knife.

Atoo was hoping to be accepted by Portugal or Germany, though he said he would be happy to go anywhere in Europe. But now he was feeling desperate, because his wife needed treatment. He told me that everyone, even Palestinians, was getting in line ahead of Iraqis. I tried to reassure him that as a Yazidi, he was bound to receive protection in Europe. But when? And would his wife survive another year in Kara Tepe?

Empty caravans await refugees outside the Hotel Arena in Halmstad, Sweden, in February 2016. (DAVID RAMOS/Getty Images)

The road to nowhere

So where to from here? Europe cannot take in all legitimate aspirants for asylum, at least until public opinion becomes far more permissive on the subject. Every terrorist attack makes that less likely. What’s more, the acute refugee crisis blurs into the larger phenomenon of global migration, as people flee not only violent states but weak and failing ones, where even those living in relative peace see no hope for the future. Before the war in Syria, virtually all migrants coming to Europe were Africans crossing the central Mediterranean to Italy. With Aegean traffic blocked, that route sprang back to life this spring and summer: In the week before I reached Lesbos, 258 migrants landed illegally in Greece, while 6,437 made it to Italian soil. The largest contributing countries, in order, are Eritrea, Nigeria, Gambia, Somalia, and Cote d’Ivoire.

The death toll has risen drastically as well: Some 3,600 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean so far this year. Some of those who make it to Italy might well have a legitimate claim to refugee status, but most, whatever very real suffering they have endured, would be classified as economic migrants — and sent back home. Africa has 1.2 billion people, with a population due to double in scarcely more than 20 years. Not even the blithest European official can foresee a solution to the problem that is African migration.

How, then, can we think about a fourth and decisive phase to the refugee crisis? The hard part, as Frans Timmermans said, is not figuring out the right policy. The kinds of solutions the European Commission laid out back in May 2015 still apply today — even more so than before the crisis. Writing in Foreign Policy this summer, the philanthropist George Soros proposed a comprehensive plan: Europe agrees to take 300,000 refugees every year while the rest of the world makes an equal commitment; the EU allots 30 billion euros annually to pay for the care of refugees inside the continent, to support refugee-hosting countries, and to bolster economic development and good governance in weak states that now export migrants; the EU fortifies border control and refugee assistance in Greece and Italy; and Europe collectively commits itself to expanding legal pathways for immigration.

The problem is political will. Plainly the rest of the world needs to come to Europe’s aid, as Soros suggests. The mere fact that Europe happens to sit on top of the Middle East and North Africa does not absolve the rest of the developed world of the universal moral obligation to give shelter to refugees. It would not be fair to say that the world has done nothing in response. In mid-September, at the U.N. General Assembly, both U.S. President Barack Obama and outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presided over summit meetings designed to elicit new commitments of help. From the latter event came the so-called “New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants,” in which world leaders pledged to raise standards for the treatment of refugees but refused to adopt Ban’s proposal that each year they resettle 10 percent of the world’s 21.3 million refugees. The Obama summit, according to the White House, produced promises of $4.5 billion in new aid while the 50 heads of state who attended collectively vowed to double the number of refugees they would accept. It is very rare, however, for such pledges to be redeemed in full.

The United States is hardly in a position to lead on the subject. The Obama administration has managed to resettle 10,000 Syrians this year despite severe political constraints, but that figure is inconsequential compared both to the scale of the problem and to the generosity of nations like Germany and Sweden. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is running on a vow to accept no immigrants from countries he deems a threat to American security, which would certainly include all the ones now sending large numbers of refugees to Europe. The refugees, in short, constitute a global problem to which there will be only a regional solution.

The EU has begun to make serious efforts to assist border states like Greece, as I saw in Lesbos. More broadly, the utter collapse of the Dublin rules has prompted efforts at reform. In May, the European Commission issued a report reiterating the obligation of states to register and care for refugees who arrive at their borders; the report also reiterated the right of states to return those who had already reached a country considered safe for asylum. In order to prevent border states from being overwhelmed, the report proposed that refugees be redistributed once any given country had taken more than 150 percent of its allotment according to an agreed-upon formula. Of course, previous attempts to establish mandatory systems of redistributing refugees have met with stout resistance from many states.

It is widely agreed, at least in theory, that Europe must spend far more money building law enforcement capacity and fostering broad economic development in Africa if it hopes to stem the tide of migration. Last fall, at a conference in Malta, EU officials unveiled a $2 billion “emergency trust fund” for Africa and just put forth plans for a package of aid and loans designed to leverage private investment in the continent. The EU is already the most generous donor to Africa, but the billions of dollars spent in past years have done little to reduce migration.

A mural at the empty refugee reception center in Niederau, Germany, in September 2016. (ARNO BURGI/AFP/Getty Images)

The idea of Europe

This is the work of a generation or more. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, is now seeking to negotiate pacts with five countries in Africa (Mali, Senegal, Niger, Nigeria, and Ethiopia) that would target funding to hard-hit areas that produce large-scale migration, as well as help with border enforcement. When I spoke to Mogherini by phone, she was at pains to tell me that illegal migration constituted as serious a problem for the sending countries as for the receiving ones, and thus the pacts offered a “win-win approach” rather than a package of bribes to block migration — which is how I heard them described by several migration experts.

This isn’t just a moral issue. There is near-universal agreement that Europe must increase legal channels of immigration. Migrants won’t turn to dangerous smuggling routes so readily if they know they have at least a decent chance of gaining legal admission. And increasing legal migration is also plainly in Europe’s self-interest. Europe needs new blood to revive flagging — or even negative — population growth. Angela Merkel is hoping that relatively well-educated Syrian refugees will, with sufficient education and training, keep Germany’s manufacturing machine humming. But migration policy has traditionally been left to national governments, and Europe, collectively, offers only the most modest programs, such as the so-called “blue card” to attract highly skilled workers. One European diplomat told me that he thought it would take “10 or 20 years” before the EU could fashion a regime of legal migration remotely equal to the magnitude of the problem.

Europe seems to be blocked in every direction. Merkel, one of the few leaders to act bravely in the face of the crisis, has suffered a collapse of political support so grave that her party recently lost to the far-right Alternative for Germany in parliamentary elections in the chancellor’s own home province. But this nativism isn’t just a local phenomenon. Right-wing parties are rising both in countries that have behaved well toward refugees and in those that have behaved badly. And every terrorist attack in Europe gives another fillip to their popularity.

The problem cannot be solved with walled borders. Refugees and migrants have now learned that getting to Europe is not a hopeless dream but a dangerous venture — a risk worth taking when life at home looks utterly bleak. That lesson will not be unlearned. Soon enough, the refugee flows will resume, and they will come to be seen not as a “crisis” but as a more or less permanent state of affairs. The barometric pressure of a poor and growing continent next to a rich and shrinking one cannot be sustained forever.

Europe is bound to become less white, less Christian, and less homogeneous. Americans know that a pluralistic society can send fresh blood coursing through a nation’s veins; but even many Americans are turning against immigrants and refugees. It’s all too easy to cater to those fears, as political leaders in the United Kingdom discovered during the Brexit debate. It’s so much harder to say, as Merkel did, that honoring the obligation to accept refugees will “occupy and change” a country in the years to come. Political leaders must find a language that will acknowledge citizens’ legitimate fears without exploiting them. If they fail, Europe could fall into the hands of leaders who stir up primeval passions once thought extinct. We may be a few generations removed, but the carnage of that hatred and fear still smolders. It’s not just the EU’s arcane rules that are at stake, or even the EU’s capacity for collective action. It is the very idea of Europe.

Top photo credit: ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images