IRIN
Morocco has become a choke point for sub-Saharan African migrants aiming to reach Europe, pinched by the Moroccan and Spanish governments working together to halt the flow across the Mediterranean.
Thousands of irregular migrants were unable or unwilling to take advantage of the Moroccan government’s limited “regularisation” process that granted less than 18,000 one-year residency permits.
They now play a cat-and-mouse game with the police in the northern Riff mountains overlooking the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
Their goal is to reach the Spanish port city – and from there head to the European mainland.
But the odds are stacked against them. Getting past the Moroccan border guards, the three layers of security fencing, the razor wire, motion sensors, CCTV cameras and the Spanish Guarda Civil is now next to impossible. Hiring a boat to sail across the Strait of Gibraltar is expensive, and the chances of success equally slim.
So they remain stuck. In this multimedia report, IRIN talks to the men and women in the mountains about what drove them on their journey; the tragedy of their wasted years in the near futile attempt to reach Europe; and why, for most of them, there can be no turning back.
