Seeking Sanctuary, More Migrants Confront Land Route’s Perils - nytimes

SUBOTICA, Serbia. — They call it “the jungle,” but it’s really just a tangle of dirt paths through stunted trees near an abandoned brick factory.

Between 150 and 200 people — mostly men, with a smattering of young families — cluster in discrete groups in scattered campsites, most resting on dusty blankets, the earth blackened here and there by the remains of the previous night’s fires.

“We have people from Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Morocco,” said Mohamd, 42, a former truck driver for a factory near Aleppo, Syria, who hopes to reach the Netherlands. “Am I forgetting anyone?”

With war continuing to plague the Middle East and Afghanistan, and thousands trying to flee Africa’s grinding poverty, the swell of refugees and migrants hoping to reach Western Europe shows no signs of abating this summer.

For the last few years, the most popular route has been across the Mediterranean on boats run by Libyan smugglers that aimed for the nearest islands off the Italian coast. But as that route has become increasingly dangerous — the range of threats include drowning, abandonment by unscrupulous smugglers and crackdowns by European border patrols — the human tide is shifting. Increasingly, migrants are following a land-based route into Europe by way of Greece and the West Balkans.

But with the alternative crossing come other perils: violence, exploitation, intolerance. Though most European countries are overwhelmed by the tide, fueling an anti-immigrant backlash in many places, Eastern European countries like Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria are considered particularly hostile. 

For a bird, the trip from Damascus, Syria, to Szeged, just across the Hungarian border, is 1,200 miles. From Kabul, Afghanistan, it is 2,700 miles. The migrant’s route, though, is rarely the most direct.  - Read More at Seeking Sanctuary

Seeking Sanctuary, More Migrants Confront Land Route’s Perils