SHORTLY after the start of the new millennium, a few of us were speculating about the new century that had just dawned, and what it would bring. This is the sort of idle chatter one has with friends over a drink, and usually forgotten the next morning.

But I still recall my prediction that we would see migration on an unprecedented scale. I based my forecast on the increasing dysfunction in much of the developing world, although as a matter of fact, the term ‘developing’ is a misnomer as many of the states thus described are actually going backwards in terms of the quality of life their citizens lead.

While my pessimistic prediction was made before 9/11, it has only gained in prescience, given the long-terms havoc that has followed those events. A huge arc has been destabilised from Afghanistan to Libya by Islamic militants who have killed tens of thousands of innocent people in a bid to terrorise the majority into surrender. The American-led intervention and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq have triggered years of warfare and unleashed ethnic and sectarian violence of unprecedented savagery. And the growing rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has led to proxy wars across the region.

Apart from these external factors, high population growth, combined with stagnant economies, have inevitably produced high unemployment. This has caused an increase in violent crime that weak states have not been able to contain. Poor governance has led to declining educational and health standards.

These are some of the ‘push’ factors that persuade people to risk their lives and spend all their savings in a bid to improve their lives, and give their kids a chance for a better future. The ‘pull’ factors include a vision of peaceful societies where people are treated equally, and rights do not depend on who you know, or how much money you have. In a world that is increasingly connected, even the poorest people in remote areas have seen images of Western societies where systems work, and people don’t starve.

Of course, the truth is often very different: legal as well as illegal migrants have very tough challenges to overcome. Often, they are unwanted, and struggle to settle in alien circumstances. Unfamiliar with their new homes and unable to communicate, they are strangers in a strange land. But despite these initial hardships, most adjust and are kept afloat by migrants who came before them and show their newly arrived compatriots the ropes.

But as images of asylum seekers drowning in the Mediterranean or the South China Sea, or victims of people — smuggling gangs, assault our sensibilities, and move editorial writers to pen stirringly sympathetic essays, we forget that these migrations are the norm, not the exception. If we look back, we find that from the dawn of history, humanity has moved across continents, forced either by aggressive neighbours, or lured by the promise of better grazing elsewhere.

Ever since Homo sapiens moved out of Africa into Europe and Asia around 125,000 years ago, mankind has been on the move. Thousands of years later, tribes from Central Asia pushed others further west and south into Europe and India. People already settled there were pushed elsewhere.

From the 16th century, the discovery of America gave persecuted Europeans a chance to acquire freedom to worship, as well as an opportunity to farm their own land. Native Americans who survived the colonial onslaught were gradually squeezed into squalid reservations. In South America, Portuguese and Spanish colonists decimated local populations. To work their sugar and cotton plantations, the Europeans imported slaves from Africa on a huge scale. Arab slavers were instrumental in this monstrous trade.

Australia was colonised as a prison colony, and aborigines hunted down in their hundreds of thousands. The remnants eke out a miserable living today. In New Zealand, the resident Maoris were displaced.

Muslim invaders from Arabia and Central Asia were also in the forefront of violent expansion. Kingdoms in the Middle East, Africa and Europe fell before the green banner of Islam. Centuries of Afghan incursions into India saw death and destruction on a horrifying scale.

The point of this brief diversion into the past is to underline the fact that human history has been written in blood and migrations. Seen against this backdrop, what we are seeing today is nothing new. The difference, of course, is that modern states can erect barriers to restrict entry, but desperate people will adopt the riskiest means to get to the promised land.

The other day, Britain’s Channel 4 showed three different groups of asylum seekers and economic migrants in an extended segment of its popular evening news programme. The first depicted the plight of refugees crossing the sea from Libya in rickety boats. They were heading for Italy, the destination of choice, as it permits them to enter other EU countries after an initial period. Understandably, an Italian government spokesman complained of his country having to accept the majority of these migrants.

The second strand looked at those crossing illegally overland into Europe through Turkey and Greece where many are either put into camps by the police, or kidnapped by gangs who then demand ransom to release them. The third one was perhaps the most tragic: Rohingyas from Myanmar who paid people-smugglers to get them to safety in Malaysia or Thailand, but were imprisoned in camps deep in the jungle, with hundreds being killed.

These are only some of the stories of desperate people voting with their feet against their own countries. The reality is that as long as these states remain dysfunctional and don’t get their act together, their marginalised citizens will take enormous risks to achieve a better life.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2015

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