Migrant ‘invasion’ of Ceuta not exactly as it seems

Many believe that a picture is worth a thousand words. And the live footage of migrants rushing into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa last week were widely seen in mainland Europe as evidence that their governments’ immigration and border controls were failing and that the doors of Europe were about to be breached.

No doubt, any large number of people — in Ceuta they were in their tens of thousands — could overwhelm any border crossing point. The Moroccan and Spanish law enforcement authorities, unless they resorted to the use of violence, were never going to be a match for the 70,000-plus people who decided to swim across to the Spanish enclave in the space of a few hours. Water cannon and other crowd control measures were deployed after the invasion had already taken place.

It was triggered, so we were told, by a court ruling in Spain limiting summary expulsions of migrants who arrive by sea. Misinformation and fake news subsequently played a toxic role in driving thousands to mindlessly enter the enclave.

Ceuta and Spain’s other North African enclave, Melilla, sit on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast and periodically face attempted crossings by ‌migrants seeking to ‌reach Europe. The two cities are each home to about 85,000 people.

Though most of the migrants who entered Ceuta last week have now returned to Morocco, the comments in reaction to the incident — which carries all the hallmarks of a Spanish-Moroccan political and diplomatic tussle — revealed a desire, mainly among the European extreme right, to capitalize on the incident and milk it for political and ideological ends.

Misinformation and fake news played a toxic role in driving thousands to mindlessly enter the enclave

Mohamed Chebaro

The calls by far-right populist politicians to use the incident as an excuse to end free movement in Europe under the Schengen Agreement or to whip up fear of migrants were a cheap shot. Especially when one considers the larger toxic political dynamics at play that ultimately led to the unnecessary deaths of more than 70 innocent migrants.

Spain and Morocco have been here before. In 2021, 8,000 migrants swam or used boats to reach Ceuta, seemingly to protest Madrid’s welcoming of the leader of the Algeria-aligned Polisario Front for medical treatment — a highly suspicious step from Morocco’s point of view.

The relaxation of Moroccan border controls at that time was a sign to Madrid that it should not collude with its adversaries. Diplomatic friction could be an explanation this time too, but multiplied tenfold, after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez ushered in a new phase in his country’s relationship with Algeria. Last month, he visited Algiers for the first time in four years and hailed Algeria’s role in supplying gas for its energy supply mix.

In 2022, Spain had pivoted toward Rabat, upsetting Algeria, when it endorsed Morocco’s plan to give the Western Sahara territory more autonomy under Moroccan rule, mirroring other European nations’ agreement with Morocco’s stance.

Spain’s socialist prime minister has found himself in a corner recently. Not only has he had to deal with his country’s perennially difficult relationship with its strategic North African neighbors and the interdependence between Rabat and Madrid on managing the toxic migration file, but also for being in the bad books of US President Donald Trump. In the past year, Sanchez has made a point of standing up to Trump in regards to NATO defense spending, US policies supporting Israel, and tech regulation and the sanctioning of the digital giants.

The digital realm seems to be able to mobilize large numbers of people and flood borders at a moment’s notice

Mohamed Chebaro

What Sanchez could not have expected was the hostility expressed by Spain’s EU partners, with Italy rushing to call for the suspension of the Schengen Agreement and France beefing up its checks on crossings from Spain. The Ceuta incident magnified an EU-wide rift between leaders along the lines of those who espouse a liberal immigration policy on moral and pragmatic grounds and those who favor a rigid anti-migrant position, even if this acts against their national interest of jobs and economic growth.

These geopolitical considerations were also confounded by a less-than-innocent digital realm, which seems to be able to mobilize large numbers of people and flood borders at a moment’s notice. In Ceuta, rumors and misinformation played a large part, as innocent posts mixed with those of the smugglers, who were attempting to sell fake hope to desperate economic migrants.

The Ceuta invasion had all the ingredients of a perfect immigration storm, creating fear across Europe and sending its politics into disarray, as weaponized migration by its enemies and frenemies alike have sown chaos and helped the rise of marginal far-right politicians. The case of Belarus flooding Poland’s border with migrants in 2021, when it guided tens of thousands of Iraqis and others to overwhelm the country as punishment for its support of Ukraine, is still raw today.

Ceuta escalated from a Moroccan-Spanish sideshow into an incident that turned EU members against each other. The real cause of this tension seems to have been Madrid’s decision earlier this year to give amnesty to half a million undocumented migrants. Others in Europe feared giving residency to those who had illegally entered the bloc could send the wrong signal and become a pull factor.

Many doubt the Ceuta influx was a threat to the EU’s border policy, as the enclave is in Africa. But it showed how vulnerable its unity is and the failure of its nations to take in their share of migrants. The problem will not disappear and Europe needs to redouble its efforts to streamline its policies and strengthen its guardrails against the weaponization of migration in this increasingly volatile yet interdependent world.

• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs, and diplomacy.