Journalist's undercover journey with Afghan refugees exposes 'hidden violence' at borders
Matthieu Aikins joined his friend, an Afghan interpreter, on smugglers' road to Europe
Matthieu Aikins knew the best way he could tell the story of a refugee's journey was to travel as one. But the Nova Scotia-born journalist and author did not anticipate how involved he would become in his fellow travelers' lives.
"It wasn't possible to just sit back and be an observer at times," Aikins told As It Happens host Carol Off.
In 2016, Aikins mailed his passport to a friend, wiped his phone and assumed the identity of an Afghan refugee named Habib. His command of Persian, combined with his own Japanese-Canadian ancestry, allowed him to join a man he calls Omar on the smugglers' road from Afghanistan to Europe. He describes the perilous journey in his new book, The Naked Don't Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees.
The events of the book take place on the heels of a great movement of people into Europe, with the majority of the migrants coming from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Aikins described this time as a kind of "suspension of the laws of nature," when the previously impenetrable barrier of Europe's border "basically buckled under the weight of humanity." It was a shift that encouraged Omar, a young Afghan interpreter, to leave the country. But it would prove to be short-lived.
By the time Omar and "Habib" embarked on their journey, most of the continent's borders had been reinforced. "After all this talk about welcoming refugees, Europe … actually closes frontiers," Aikins said. "They had strengthened these detention camps in the islands where refugees were now kept without being able to move onward for months in very awful conditions. They'd built new fences on the border."
The situation forced Omar to turn to smugglers, who transport refugees in small rafts on the Mediterranean Sea under the cover of night — a crossing that has claimed so many lives that Pope Francis recently referred to the Mediterranean as Europe's largest cemetery.
"It was a scary trip, of course, with 40 of us crammed into a rubber raft," Aikins said. "But I knew the ocean — whereas people around me, including Omar, they'd never been to sea before."
Hidden violence of refugee camps
The coast of Europe brought little relief, as Aikins and Omar were sent to the refugee camp near Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos — known as one of the worst places for migrants, before a fire shut it down in September 2020.
"This is a camp that was built for a thousand or so people," Aikins said. By the time he and Omar arrived, there were 5,000 residents. "The bathrooms are atrocious. People are lining up for hours to wait for food, which is these meagre, often-rotten rations. So you can understand why fights break out. It's dehumanizing."
The high-risk, often illegal choices people make in the passage to Europe — dealing with smugglers, crossing dangerous waters, living in inhumane conditions in camps — are the reality of being forced to flee war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Aikins said.
The journalist described these obstacles as part of the "hidden violence" of migration he witnessed on his journey. " [People] weren't massing up against barbed wire fences anymore and being beaten and sprayed with tear gas. They were being kept away in camps and hidden as people moved onward."
According to some United Nations estimates, over six million people are currently living in refugee camps. Greece's refugee camps, like the one where Aikins and Omar stayed in Lesbos, have been compared to prisons.
Aikins described the uncertainty of living in refugee camps as "a form of psychological torture," which many migrants experience in addition to escaping disasters in their home countries. And much of the horror of the camps is by design. "The pain inflicted on people in these camps is part of the deterrent effect," he said. "They're designed to deter people from coming."
Despite all of the hardships on their journey, Aikins said he never entertained the possibility of ditching his alter ego and getting to safety. "The thought was always there that I could do it, but I didn't ever consider it, because it would have meant abandoning my friend."
Eventually, they escaped the camp and each travelled separately to Athens by plane — with Omar relying on forged documents to do so — before being reunited in the Greek capital.
Return to Afghanistan
Omar had settled in Europe by the time the Taliban took over control of Afghanistan in 2021, causing another wave of mass migration out of the country. Hundreds of Afghans — many of them in a similar situation to Omar, having worked with Canadian and American military — were forced to flee from their homes under threat of reprisal.
Aikins went back to the country in summer of 2021 to report on the situation, and was glad that Omar left when he did. "[I] witnessed some of the most horrific things I've ever seen and saw so many friends flee for their lives," the journalist said. "I was so glad that he wasn't there anymore."
Aikins said the trip with Omar revealed more to him than just the experience of refugees at European borders; it revealed insights about humanity as a whole.
"It was really about figuring out how to be true to your friends, to the people you love, creating some kind of solidarity that goes across those borders and divisions, without ever forgetting your privilege and the place that you come from."
Written by Olsy Sorokina. Interview with Matthieu Aikins produced by Chloe Shantz-Hilkes.
