Europe’s latest migrant crisis leaves refugees stuck between two borders

IT IS THEEU first sight of men with guns in the village since Poland’s communist rulers declared martial law 40 years ago. But the villagers of Nowy Dwor, 5km (three miles) from the border with Belarus, say they feel protected by the makeshift barracks that have been set up on the school sports field. Soldiers are here to patrol a frontier that seldom required close supervision before the events of this summer. “When the migrants first started coming,” says a retired health worker, “I was afraid to fetch potatoes from my field for dinner.”Fright at the thought of a new influx of migrants affects most of Europe’s governments, too. But what is happening in Poland, Lithuania and Latvia is no ordinary migrant crisis. The people trying to cross into those countries are not victims of Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship next door in Belarus, but its guests. Mr Lukashenko engineered their arrival, most of them on direct flights from Iraq. Then, to embarrass his neighbours, he sought to pass them on. His guards have been filmed directing them across the border and into the . In recent weeks Lithuania and Poland have each nabbed around 3,000 migrants entering from Belarus.