Lithuania struggles with migrant flood opened by Belarus

VEREBIEJAI, Lithuania (AP) — Mustafa Hussein Hamad kicked a dirty ball between two old tires in the schoolyard where he spends most of his time. He and dozens of other migrants are fenced in at an old school after walking at night through the thick woods into Lithuania from neighboring Belarus.

“I paid 1,400 bucks after a friend pointed out this new way to Europe," said the 20-year-old from Baghdad as he waited at the shabby two-story school housing 160 people. Recounting his journey from Iraq for a better life in the European Union, he added: "They said it is a nice shortcut by plane to Minsk.”

The building is one of many facilities that Lithuania quickly converted to hold hundreds of people from the Middle East and Africa — a flood that officials in the Baltic country say was unleashed by Belarusian authorities in a “hybrid war” against the EU.

Daily arrivals sometimes reach triple digits as migrants cross the frontier and appear in the woods in front of Lithuanian border guards, encounter locals picking mushrooms, or simply walk into towns. More than 1,700 have arrived in recent weeks, compared with only 80 for all of 2020.

Lithuania says the influx is an act of retaliation by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Since the authoritarian leader's reelection to a sixth term in an August 2020 vote that the West denounced as rigged, he has cracked down on opposition protests in his country.

In May, Belarus diverted a passenger jet to Minsk to arrest a dissident journalist, and the EU responded to what it deemed an act of air piracy with tough sanctions. Lukashenko, in turn, ordered a halt to cooperation with the EU on stemming illegal migration.

“If some think that we will close our borders with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine and become a camp for people...