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Would-Be Immigrants Assaulting Spanish Enclaves in Northern Africa

In the early morning hours of Thursday, over a hundred would-be African immigrants stormed the fences protecting a Spanish enclave. Left behind were five dead bodies and many unanswered questions. First among them: Is there a sane way to deal with illegal immigrants?

AFP

An African immigrant shows his bandaged hand at a temporary holding center in Melilla after injuring himself scaling the fence separating the enclave from northern Africa.

The city of Ceuta has long been fortified by barbed-wire fences and patrolled by armed military teams, but it's never experienced the violence that erupted on its border early Thursday morning. When the gun fire quieted, five Africans were dead and Spanish military reinforcements were already on the way to the area.

Ceuta is one of two autonomous Spanish cities -- Melilla is the other -- that sit on the northern coast of Morocco. As such, they are the only European territories that are not separated from Africa by water. Unsurprisingly, they've attracted desperate people from the entire African continent who hope that life on Spanish soil will more prosperous than what they've been allotted in their own countries.

Early on pre-dawn Thursday morning, hundreds of would-be refugees took the matter into their own hands. In what appears to be a planned, early-morning incursion, dozens of people crossed the fence that separates Moroccan territory from Spanish. There were five fatalities, but both the Spanish and the Moroccan governments deny being responsible for them. An investigation, endorsed both by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero and Moroccan President Driss Jettou -- who happened to be together at the 7th Annual Bilateral Meeting between their countries -- is underway to determine what exactly transpired.

The night raid followed a similar raid earlier in the week in Melilla, in which some 500 would-be immigrants stormed the fence. There is speculation that the later raid was prompted by Spanish discussion of raising the fences around its cities to 20 feet.

In any case, the incidents have done little to stem persistent fears in Spain and other European countries that illegal immigration is a problem on the verge of spinning out of control. But, as migrant pressure has increased dramatically in recent years, an especially great toll has been exacted on the entire Mediterranean region, not only Europe. Morocco is struggling mightily to deal with an influx of sub-Saharan Africans into its own territory.

Conflicts of this sort are not entirely unprecedented: Indeed, Ceuta and Melilla have been Spanish possessions since the 15th Century. There's a lot of shared history, if not love lost. But, it's only been in the last few decades that Spanish and Moroccan authorities have had a convenient third party to arbitrate their disputes: namely, the European Union. Yesterday, both Zapatero and Jettou unabashedly called for the EU to help control the tide of immigration.

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