Bodrum, Turkey: If you believe that the Arab Spring has led to the greatest movement in human migration since the end of the Second World War, you’re right — but only partly so.
Here, at what has effectively become a Ground Zero for illegal migrants trying to get to Europe, Gulf News can report that at least 15 per cent of those bidding to make it across the borders of the European Union — the Greek island of Kos just seven kilometres offshore here — are actually south Asian.
At the crowded bus station here, a group of 13 young Pakistani men are waiting for contact from the latest individual in a chain that had brought them thus far from Karachi.
“Four thousand,” one young man said, looking over his shoulder at the others as he spoke to Gulf News.
“US dollars,” he said.
They have been on the road for a month.
Each has their worldly belongings tied up in plastic shopping bags from a grocery store that might sit at any corner in any street in any city around the world.
Back in the Pakistani port city with a reputation for hard drugs, organised crime and lives snuffed out in countless acts of street violence, they begged, borrowed and stole the equivalent of three years of annual salary to get to Europe.
“Sir, we can’t say,” one told Gulf News as they hid under the shade of a trees lining a corner of the busy bus depot.
And so far, the baker’s dozen of the desolate, desperate and deeply indebted have crossed over at night into Iran, then moved up and over to Turkey.
Where are you going,” Gulf News asked.
“Manchester,” one offered.
Kos, and the European Union is seven kilometres away. Manchester, another 4,000 kilometres. By then, who knows what those shredded plastic bags might hold.
