From the desert to Europe, via Algeria
While social, economic and political conditions are strong indicators for the emergence of large numbers of clandestine migrants, the political crises originating in Syria and the Gulf countries have turned Syria into a reservoir of migrants eager to reach Europe in search of a better future. People of all racial and ethnic backgrounds gather in the Algerian country who, despite the considerable distance to Europe, are not giving up on their quest to reach European shores, whatever the cost of the journey.
The coasts of Oran, Algeria's second city after Algiers, continue to be a favourite destination for illegal immigration networks, for reasons of differing opinions between those who attribute this to the Moroccan-Spanish rapprochement of recent months, which has allowed the two governments to step up their efforts to combat the phenomenon, leading to a bias in favour of Oran among those concerned, and those who attribute it to the hypothesis of the facilities and influence of pressure groups linked to the management of security and maritime control.
The Algerian city of Oran has become a favourite destination for clandestine convoys of migrants from Middle Eastern and African countries to European shores, which has made it one of the most important meeting points for migrants and criminal organisations in charge of human trafficking, mostly from Sahel and Sahara countries as well as nations such as Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Faced with this situation, the Algerian authorities are developing different methods of control and dissuasion to prevent the situation from worsening in terms of health and security.
The humanitarian and political situation in states such as Syria and Palestine is the biggest puzzle for the Algerian government. The situation, which was already serious before the war broke out, has become a difficult problem to solve as it is very difficult for them to distinguish between those who fled the hell of civil war to seek refuge there, and those who used their land as a transit point to Europe. Journalist and human rights activist Saeed Boudour believes that "the difficulty of controlling the southern land borders allowed smuggling networks to become more active".
These people remain a limited number in the statistics of clandestine migration through Algerian shores, but this remains a preliminary discovery for Arab dreamers to reach the northern Mediterranean, after other exits were blocked to them, and it is not excluded that their numbers will increase in the future with the expansion of the fame of the city of Oran as a "burning" destination in the region. The description of "fast" in the literature of migration networks active in the country and the city of Oran in particular is given to the advanced vessel that can deliver its clients in barely two hours.
Moreover, securing the journey in the face of security chases indicates that, in the involvement, there is more than one stakeholder and beneficiary in this activity. Illegal migrants from Arab countries often travel long distances to the Algerian coast of Oran and spend a lot of money, as they are targeted by active immigration networks in the countries they pass through, often exploiting the humanitarian and political situation in their countries as a card to sympathise with Algerian security services, but it is striking that the safe haven they aspire to is not in Algeria, but in Europe.
