A rarely used migration route to Europe picked up steam this summer: boats started arriving in Cyprus directly from war-torn Syria.
The scale of this new traffic hasn’t been seen before in the eastern Mediterranean. Until now, refugees travelling to the island would generally have left from Lebanon or Turkey. But Cypriot and Lebanese deterrence measures, combined with the corrupt activities of military personnel in Syria, have pushed departures to the Syrian coast, between the cities of Latakia and Tartous.
Taim, a 26-year-old Syrian man from Aleppo, travelled the 60 miles (100 km) separating Syria from Cyprus on a fisherman’s boat in June, along with 40 other Syrians. “I wanted to travel legally,” he explained over the phone from a refugee camp in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. “For over a year I tried really hard to get every requirement asked for a Schengen visa. I spent a lot of money and got into lots of debt. But it was all for nothing.”
