Geopolitical Pressure and Migration

The Sahel Challenge for Europe Geopolitical Pressure and Migration: The Sahel Challenge for Europe Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Compartment in Google Plus By Javier Lopez Otero and Reinaldo Batista Cordova Historically, the Sahara Desert, a gigantic space similar in size to countries like China or the United States, has been an insurmountable natural barrier for centuries due to its extreme conditions, and it had only been able to be crossed thanks to the exclusive geographic knowledge of local nomadic tribes such as the Tuareg and to the founding of oasis cities such as Tamanrasset, Timbuktu or Agadez. For centuries these tribes were able to control a small traffic of goods, slaves and capital and it was their particular monopoly until the development of navigation techniques during the 16th to 19th centuries. However, today technological advances in , capital and people (including migrants) much more easily.

This has implied the expansion of

Europe’s migratory border towards the south of the desert, that is, in the populous and raw materials-rich region of the Sahel. Figure 1. Sahel Region. Own creation from Google Earth This situation has been widely recognized in the important EU migration regulation of  which implies  Australia Phone Number Data cooperation with countries involved in trans-Saharan routes such as Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Chad or Sudan. Collaboration, among other aspects, has involved the monitoring and control of flows through collaboration in intelligence tasks and physically on the borders between countries, which is why these measures have shown partial effectiveness during the five-year period following their adoption. approval. However, for two years now European regulations have been seriously tested to stop the growing tide of migrants forced from their homes by conflict, economic desperation and now, deliberate geopolitical strategies by third countries.

Figure Thousands of trips

According to the Mediterranean access route. Source: Own elaboration based on Frontex  In this sense, it is worth highlighting the indirect involvement of Russia, particularly through the collaboration of the  Brazil Phone Number List Wagner Group, a private military company, which acts as a proxy for the Kremlin in the coups in Mali  which have gone from cooperating with the EU to being more reticent to collaborate with the EU under the terms established by the aforementioned regulation. This situation has indirectly fostered conditions that drive migration, which not only undermines European border security but also aggravates the humanitarian crisis in the Sahel. Although there are hardly any statistics in this regard, it is worth considering that the changes in the governments.