Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 25

MIGRATION AS A WEAPON

Refugees walk from Syria into Akçakale, Sanliurfa Province, southeastern Turkey, 14 June 2015 after breaking through a border fence. The
mass displacement of Syrians came as Kurdish fighters announced they were making headway toward the city of Tal Abyad, a stronghold of
the Islamic State near the Turkish border. (Photo by Lefteris Pitarakis, Associated Press)

Migration as a Weapon
in Theory and in Practice
Dr. Kelly M. Greenhill
Editor’s note: This article is adapted in part from Weapons
of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and
Foreign Policy by Kelly M. Greenhill. © 2010 by Cornell
University. It is used by permission of the publisher, Cornell
University Press.

I

n late March 2016, ambassadors from the twenty-eight European Union (EU) member states
concluded what was supposed to be a secret deal
to curtail further in-migration with leaders of eight
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2016

countries in the Horn of Africa. They were responding
to mounting fears and anxiety within the EU about the
migration crisis that brought more than one million
people to Europe in 2015 alone. In exchange for a
promise to help stanch unregulated flows of people to
Europe, the EU agreed to pr ovide the African countries
with about $50 million in monetary and in-kind aid
and equipment over the following three years.1
This deal followed closely on the heels of far more
broadly publicized migration deal between the EU
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