President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, whom the E.U. accuses of engineering a migrant crisis on the border with Poland, could face a serious headache if asylum seekers try to stay in his country.
But a threat President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko has never before had to contend with is now taking shape in a squalid migrant encampment along his country’s border with Poland. Having helped funnel desperate migrants to Europe’s doorstep, Mr. Lukashenko suddenly has to deal with people like Bale Nisu, a 21-year-old Kurd from Iraq who has taken a liking to Belarus, and would like to settle here.
Many of the more than 2,000 people marooned on the Belarusian side of the razor wire at Bruzgi, a large, shuttered border crossing, insist they won’t give up on trying to get into the European Union. But growing fears that they might instead get sent back to their home countries has made Mr. Nisu and others wonder whether staying put in Belarus could be their best option.
“I want to go to Germany, but if that is impossible, I’ll just stay here,” Mr. Nisu said Wednesday after moving into a big warehouse near the border that has been converted into a migrant holding center by the Belarusian authorities in an effort to release pressure on the border — and burnish the country’s often grim image.
He lamented that he had spent more than $4,000 and days freezing in the forest only to end up in a poor, highly repressive former Soviet republic with little to offer in the way of jobs and other opportunities.
But, showing rips in his pants, which he maintained were caused by Polish security forces beating him up after an abortive attempt to sneak across the frontier last week, he said that Belarus looked far more enticing than returning to Iraq, or more encounters with Polish soldiers and border guards. He said he wanted to apply for asylum in Belarus.
“Belarus,” he said, “is a very, very good country.”
Dictators don’t usually have to worry about having their country praised, but Mr. Lukashenko, often described as “Europe’s last dictator,” could face a serious headache if migrants start demanding political asylum in Belarus. It is a predominantly Orthodox Christian nation with scant experience of taking in foreign immigrants and, like Poland and other East European countries, has been generally hostile to non-Christian settlers from outside Europe.
Belarus has spent weeks denouncing Poland for violating international law by refusing to consider asylum requests and pushing back migrants — mostly people fleeing poverty but some of whom have legitimate claims to asylum as refugees from war or persecution — who make it across the border.
But what Belarus presents as a humanitarian crisis is viewed by the European Union as the front line in a “hybrid war” engineered by Mr. Lukashenko to pressure Europe into lifting sanctions imposed after a contested presidential election last year.