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<\/p>\n\u2018WEAPONISED\u2019 by Europe\u2019s last dictator on the migrant trail from Belarus, Sandar Ahmed has finally reached the shores of the English Channel.<\/p>\n
An unwitting pawn in a deadly game of geopolitics, the Iraqi was lured to the Eastern European nation on a tourist visa before being pushed across the EU\u2019s border as part of a sinister \u201chybrid war\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Now hoping to stow away on a lorry to Britain, Sandar, 32, told me: \u201cBelarusian soldiers guided us across the border into Poland \u2014 but they were using us as political weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n
A pitiful human chess piece played by despot Alexander Lukashenko, Sandar fled violence in Iraq where, despite being a business graduate, he was unable to find a job.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the sprawling \u00adGrande-Synthe migrant camp where he was living was raided by French cops, he revealed: \u201cI arrived in \u00adBelarus legally on a tourist visa.<\/p>\n
\u201cMyself and other migrants were then taken to the border by minibus and shown where to wade across the Bug river into Poland.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were helped by Belarusian police and military. They stole money and mobile phones from some \u00adpeople.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a fresh headache for Home \u00adSecretary Priti Patel, who just this week admitted Britain was in the grip of a \u201cmass migration crisis\u201d fuelled by the EU.<\/p>\n
Increasingly frustrated, she added: \u201cLet\u2019s not forget the real problem is the EU has no border protection whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, Sandar was far from the only migrant on the French coast who arrived via Belarus, a 1000-mile trip that takes in Poland and \u00adGermany.<\/p>\n
I found Syrian Ahmad Houija \u2014 a farmer originally from former Islamic State capital Raqqa \u2014 forlornly \u00adwandering the roads near the Calais ferry terminus.<\/p>\n
Through a wheezy cough, the father, who arrived here a month ago, said: \u201cBelarus was very, very bad. There was no food or water.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Polish border guards told me, \u2018Go back to [Belarus capital] Minsk.\u2019 In the night, I cut the fence and ran through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now Ahmad, 36, who wants to join his two sisters living in Glasgow, revealed: \u201cI\u2019ve spent the past seven years in Lebanon after escaping the war in Syria. My family is still there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had four children, but the little one died. I just want them to be able to go to school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahmad had flown from Lebanon to Minsk after Lukashenko\u2019s regime doled out tourist visas to people from across the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Quoted \u00a33,700 for a place on a \u00adrickety dinghy to Britain\u2019s shores, he ran out of money after spending almost \u00a37,500 to reach Calais.<\/p>\n
This week Ahmad was a bystander in some of the most chaotic scenes I\u2019ve witnessed in two decades reporting from the French coastline.<\/p>\n
Despite a \u00a354million payment to France of British \u00adtaxpayers\u2019 cash and ever-tougher megaphone diplomacy from the Home Secretary, the well-oiled smuggling networks were in full flow.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, French police orchestrated a dawn raid at the squalid \u201cNew Jungle\u201d camp at Grande-Synthe on the outskirts of Dunkirk.<\/p>\n
It was home to around 1,500 migrants and infested with gun-toting \u00adsmugglers.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s get-tough look was somewhat ruined by events unfolding 45 miles down the coast.<\/p>\n
At first light, dozens of migrants shouldering a giant black inflatable charged from sand dunes on to the beach near Wimereux straight towards a waiting ITV News camera crew. <\/p>\n
Leaving French soil for the final time, one gleeful-looking migrant revealed he had been \u201cseven years in France \u2014 five years in prison\u201d.<\/p>\n
Then ITV reporter Dan Rivers calmly did a piece to camera as the dinghy bobbed in the waves without a police officer in sight.<\/p>\n
Later, The Sun obtained footage of three exhausted migrants haphazardly rowing across the Channel by kayak that same morning. It is unclear if they made it to Britain.<\/p>\n
Decathlon sports stores around Calais \u2014 including one in Grande-Synthe \u2014 have banned the sale of the small boats over fears that they would end up being used to cross to Britain.<\/p>\n
In the past three weeks, at least ten men have died trying to cross the Channel, including two in kayaks, according to The Times newspaper.<\/p>\n
On Monday, a 1990s Kawasaki jet ski \u2014 believed to have been piloted by migrants \u2014 even made it into \u00adBritish waters. <\/p>\n
Amid the chaos, more than 24,000 migrants have arrived by small boat this year \u2014 almost triple last year\u2019s 8,420 tally.<\/p>\n
Last week, 1,185 crossed the Channel in a single day \u2013 but it emerged on Wednesday that just five migrants had been returned to Europe this year. <\/p>\n
Immigration minister Tom \u00adPursglove conceded that the situation was \u201ccompletely unacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n
It ratchets up the pressure on Ms Patel \u2014 spoken of by some as a potential Tory leader \u2014 who this week allowed herself to become a hostage to fortune by vowing to stop \u201c100 per cent\u201d of the dinghy crossings.<\/p>\n
Close to the old Jungle site near Calais I met a group of middle-class Iranians discussing the Home \u00adSecretary\u2019s migration policy on a roadside verge.<\/p>\n
The well-heeled party, including a financial analyst, a confectioner and a medical equipment salesman, say they are Christian converts escaping \u00adpersecution.<\/p>\n
Some used Grants whisky and coke in paper cups to toast having fled \u00adstifling life in the land of the \u00adayatollahs via Greece.<\/p>\n
Almost 30 per cent of migrants who cross the Channel come from Iran \u2014 more than any other nationality.<\/p>\n
Carpenter Milad Koozehgari, 29, said: \u201cWe had good jobs in Iran, we\u2019re not poor people. We just want religious freedom.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy advice to Priti Patel is don\u2019t pay the French to stop us, but instead charge us for visas to come to your country. We want to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Further up the coast, migrants have lived at the crumbling industrial complex in Grande-Synthe for the past six months. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday \u00addozens were loaded on to coaches and taken to shelters in other locations. Cops detained 13 suspected people smugglers during the raid.<\/p>\n
Left behind was a wasteland of piled rubbish, abandoned tents and smoldering fires.<\/p>\n
Evictions of migrant camps in Calais and Dunkirk have taken place regularly since the destruction of the original Jungle near Calais in 2016. <\/p>\n
Many migrants at Grande-Synthe slipped through the police cordon and melted away into \u00adsurrounding scrubland.<\/p>\n
Still dripping wet from their failed attempt at crossing the Channel, Iraqi Kurds Rawand, 27, and Awez, 24, strode back to the remnants of the camp they once called home still wearing fluorescent life jackets. <\/p>\n
Shivering in spasms, Rawand told me: \u201cWe were at sea for five hours and were 2km from English waters when our engine broke. We had to be rescued by the French coastguard.\u201d<\/p>\n
They were eventually allowed through the cordon by cops to pick through the piled up detritus for their possessions.<\/p>\n
A day later, migrants were again pitching tents in marshy fields and thick woodland around the rubbish-strewn New Jungle site.<\/p>\n
Among them was Iraqi Kurd Harem, 21, another who had taken the Belarus migrant trail after \u00adflying via Dubai to Minsk.<\/p>\n
Gesturing at the wrecked tents, discarded clothes and rotting baguettes, he said: \u201cWe lived here like monkeys.\u201d <\/p>\n
An accountancy \u00adstudent who left Iraq because he was \u201cunable to get a proper job\u201d, Harem told how corrupt Polish border guards stole 1,050 euros from him in return for letting him into the country. <\/p>\n
Now he has no money for his passage to Britain, saying: \u201cI don\u2019t know how I\u2019ll get there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Rzgar family, led by mum Kazhal, re-pitched their tent in the field next to the wrecked New \u00adJungle.<\/p>\n
Hoping to join family in Birmingham, the 46-year-old and her four children \u2014 from Darbandikhan, in Iraqi Kurdistan \u2014 journeyed by boat from Turkey to Italy before arriving at the camp earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Youngest daughter Hasty, seven, seemingly oblivious to the squalor around her, laughed as she hitched a ride on a supermarket trolley piled with their blankets.<\/p>\n
Older daughter, art student Hadya, 22, said: \u201cIn Iraq, we have no money. We just want a good life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brother Mubin, 16, said: \u201cMum is scared about the boat journey and we don\u2019t have the money. It\u2019s 2,500 euros each. We\u2019ll have to borrow it.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, French cops again raided the remnants of the camp. Bedraggled migrant families \u2014 their \u00adblankets, tents and other meagre belongings stuffed into trollies \u2014 weaved in and out of traffic on the busy D601.<\/p>\n
Tyrant Lukashenko, who claimed victory in the rigged 2020 presidential election, unleashed the migrant chaos in retaliation for rounds of EU sanctions. <\/p>\n
Last week, some 4,000 people searching for a better life were coaxed by the strongman\u2019s goons from Minsk to Poland\u2019s \u00adfortified border. <\/p>\n
They were met by 15,000 Polish soldiers and border guards \u2014 trapping families in a freezing and hellish limbo.<\/p>\n
Sending me videos of the \u00admiserable scenes this week, Iraqi Mahamad Sexo, 35, said: \u201cWe are stuck here, there are many children with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the crisis reached boiling point, with Polish forces using tear gas and water cannon to repel migrants trying to breach the border. <\/p>\n
Later, Belarus eased \u00adtensions \u2014 at least for now \u2014 by providing shelter in a giant \u00adwarehouse for around a thousand of those trapped at the border.<\/p>\n
Back in Grande-Synthe, Sandar is looking for a place to bed down for the night as the temperature plummets. <\/p>\n
The dejected Iraqi said: \u201cMy advice to other migrants is never travel through Belarus. It\u2019s the wrong route to reach your dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
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