The first victim of the pre-war situation on the Belarusian-Polish border fell on Saturday, November 13. One Polish soldier was killed in an accident, who was deployed there with other military detachments of the Polish army in order to defend the country with more than 50 million inhabitants…
A detachment of soldiers by the head of a migrant: An unprecedented hypocrisy of morals and humanity
Rhetorically speaking, the Western allies have taken a small step towards a war with the Federal State of Russia-Belarus in recent days.
The first victim of the pre-war situation on the Belarusian-Polish border fell on Saturday, November 13. One Polish soldier was killed in an accident, who was deployed there with other military detachments of the Polish army in order to defend the country with more than 50 million inhabitants from the invasion of “several hundred” or “several thousand” bare-handed migrants.
Although no one, not even the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), knows for sure the actual number of accidental or intentional casualties on the Belarusian-Polish border, the narrow border zone between Poland and Belarus was turned into the most militarized area of Europe overnight.
Did it happen by staging the coordinated levers of ubiquitous geopolitics; the latest Russian-Belarusian experiment of a ‘hybrid war’ against Western allies (using refugee mothers and children as ammunition); or, rhetorically, did the war come to a step with the planned misfortune of the people who were left homeless by the same geopolitics?
Or all this is shrunk together in the same pot of global madness and immorality – these are questions that these days are unsuccessfully asked not only by military experts, diplomats or analysts, but also ordinary mortals in today's world where empathy, morality and humanity survive a collapse never seen before. A collapse that can leave no one indifferent.
Are the West and the East facing war over migrants?
Rhetorically speaking, the Western allies have taken a small step towards a war with the Russian-Belarusian state in recent days, although geopolitics, Belarusian, Polish and international humanitarian organizations have no way of agreeing on the number of Belarusian attackers on the Polish border in a desperate attempt to parade that great country to her refugee-migrant stepmother to the European Union, and to her compassionate mother Germany.
Humanitarian organizations are handling data from two and a half to five thousand unfortunates stuck in the jaws of geopolitics. According to data of the government in Minsk, there are a total of about fifteen thousand of them in Belarus. Polish media report about “about three thousand instrumentalized migrants”. UNHCR Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, however, spoke of only “hundreds of men, women and children freezing without adequate shelter, food, water and medical care”.
On the other hand, Western military intelligence sources, as well as the military-commanding leaders of the Polish army and the Baltic countries, speak of 12,000 to as many as 20,000 Polish and Lithuanian soldiers, police special forces and border guards stationed on the border with Belarus. According to that calculation, at least four to six citizens of the European Union under arms are assigned to each “instrumentalized” migrant from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa.
And NATO in action
There are, we see, tanks, other heavy and medium-heavy weapons and implements, fighter jets and helicopters flying over the militarized area. There are, of course, NATO reinforcements. Because according to the letter of Agreement on the establishment of this military alliance, an attack on one member of the Alliance (Poland) is an attack on the entire Alliance! On the other side of the Polish-Belarusian border, as strengthening, Russian fighter planes are flying over these days, because according to the wording of the Agreement on the Federal State and the recently approved joint military doctrine, an attack on one FSRB member is an attack on another!
Several hundred migrants (according to the UNHCR) or several thousand (according to humanitarian organizations) on the Polish-Belarusian border brought, so to speak, the world before the global war – not a war of Poland against Belarus or vice versa, but before a war of the West against the East!
The situation on the ground is thus portrayed primarily by deafening political rhetoric on both sides of the EU's eastern border, through media reports, from the top of the European institutions and the White House, and through statements from the North Atlantic Alliance. On the other hand, the UN Secretary General, Security Council, Council of Europe, OSCE, statesmen of other countries, think tanks, NGOs, defenders of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… do not act in accordance with their obligations and capabilities, but remain silent. So, is a global war over migrants really possible in such circumstances? And do the scenes from the field really justify that?
New, revengeful, sanctions against Lukashenko
If we delved even more superficially into the prehistory of the latest tensions in the currently most militarized zone of Europe, it would be easy to come across factual facts that show that migrants in the disputed border zone are not, nor can they be, the reason for such tension. They can be, and are, an occasion – a very shaky reason for new revenge sanctions by the EU and Western allies against Belarus and its president. Revengeful – due to the recent failure of the Western “colored revolution” from which the collapse of the dictatorial regime in Belarus was to be born; due to Belarus' ever closer alliance with Russia; due to insufficient efficiency of all previous packages of Western sanctions; and mostly because of the latest Russian-Belarusian legal decisions on strengthening the Federal State, which were approved earlier this month.
The fact that migrants are not and cannot be on the occasion of such a commotion on the Polish-Belarusian border is best shown by the data on the current number of migrants. Even if there were all fifteen thousand of them in the whole of Belarus, as many as the government in Minsk managed to count, that is only one 'crumb' in relation to at least one million refugees and migrants who have crossed the borders of Western Balkan countries since 2014 and 2015. And only in relation to the “four to seven million” that ended in those critical years in Greece as a member of the Union, and in Turkey, which is not.
This incomparably greater refugee drama on the southern border of the European Union has been resolved (temporarily because the migrant crisis is not over and will not be in the foreseeable future) by compromise decisions, talks and generous payments from the European budget. In both countries, there was military assistance to police and border detachments, but at that time neither the EU nor the Atlantic military allies played with militarization in that part of Europe.
Let us therefore hypothetically move from the Belarusian-Polish border to, say, the Croatian-Bosnian border: Croatia is the guardian of the European border with non-EU members in the south – towards Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, just as Poland is the European border guard with Belarus and Russia. In all the past years, and even in recent months, Croatia has treated migrants as a very strict guardian of European borders, not even stopping from beating the unfortunate homeless on its territory. Not to mention the forcible return of migrants outside the Union. In the same way Poland, which is also a member of the Union, treats migrants today.
Unprecedented hypocrisy
At critical moments, Croatia also announced the possibility of military reinforcements to its police and border detachments. She announced, but she was not allowed to do so. At that time, the European institutions, the highest Brussels officials, the USA and NATO did not come to Croatia's aid by inciting it to war against its neighbors, but (rhetorically) directed the Croatian government to come to its senses towards migrants.
Although only rhetorically, they asked the government in Zagreb for what is not required of the government in Warsaw now – they demanded that it act in accordance with European principles of human rights, including unreserved respect for the rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. In addition to the EU Accession Treaty and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both members of the Union are bound by the provisions of the Dublin Asylum Regulation, according to which the member whose territory the migrant first entered is responsible for the care of migrants and their rights.
As we said, even then it was just sweet-talking rhetoric. In reality, Croatia had the full support of European institutions in preventing migrants from entering Union territory even at the cost of abuse. It is the same now on Polish-Belarusian border: the EU's goal is not to help migrants, but to prevent them from becoming part of European problems.
After all that is obvious from the example of these two EU members, should we even ask why the EU, NATO, the USA and their partners, allies and sympathizers behaved like that on the southern borders of the EU (the case of Croatia), and now behave quite differently (militantly) behave on their eastern border? The answer could be given even by a mediocre founder: Croatia does not border Belarus in the south, but Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. In addition, the dictator's dictator, Vladimir Putin – that fearless guardian of his weaker brother's back – should be hit in the head over Belarus.
Hypocrisy of morality, empathy and humanity is what threatens humanity the most at this time. No global wars with real causes.
Source: aljazeera
