How Bikes Are Helping Syrian Refugees to Safety
While the world’s focus on the Syrian refugee crisis is fixed on the hundred thousands-strong groups of citizens fleeing across the Mediterranean to southern Europe, a small number of refugees is taking a far different route to safety, and the bicycle is playing a pivotal role.
As the New York Times and Reuters reported last week, refugees began trickling across the Russian-Norwegian border last year—a border which, in a twist, is largely only accessible to them by bicycle.
Refugees are drawn to the northern route due to Syria’s warm official relationship with Russia, which recently began conducting airstrikes in Syria against opponents of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad’s besieged regime. Not that the reception to the refugees themselves has been warm: the Times’ Andrew Higgins reports that they are greeted mostly with disgust. Welcome or not, it’s a path to Europe and safety.
A further lure: Norway is part of the 26-nation Schengen Area, which allows passport-free movement between countries for EU citizens. Finland is as well, but border access there from the Russian side is only by permit, and crossings require a visa. Travel between Russia and the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia is similarly restricted. That makes Norway’s Storskog border crossing, in the nation’s northeast corner, the only direct overland route from Russia to Western Europe.
All of that provides a tempting pathway, particularly since the trip is not much more expensive than the more popular, but harrowing, southern route across the Mediterranean to Greece. But neither route is simple.
To get to Storskog, refugees typically travel first to Lebanon, where they fly from Beirut to Moscow; take a plane or train to the Arctic Sea port of Murmansk; and then travel to the border, typically by paying to board a growing ad-hoc fleet of minibuses that has sprung up to capitalize on the migrants’ desperate attempts to reach Europe.
That’s where the bikes come in, in a Catch-22 worthy of Joseph Heller himself. Russian law allows border crossings only by vehicle, while Norwegian law penalizes anyone who transports undocumented migrants across borders by vehicle. That would seem to close the border, but the refugees were not to be denied.
In the last Russian town before the border, Nikel—after taking a plane, a train, and possibly several cars—the migrants obtain their last transport: a bike. But they don’t typically ride the bike from Nikel, which is about 30 miles from the Storskog crossing. Rather, they put the bikes on taxis or minbuses for a lift to the entrance to the Russian side of the border, where they fill out paperwork and ride the bikes a short distance—perhaps less than 100 yards—across the border.
Once in Norway, the brand-new bikes are often abandoned, or confiscated by Norwegian authorities; in another Hellerian twist, Norwegian safety rules require two hand brakes per bike, and many of the cheap Russian bikes have only one. One photo accompanying the Times’ article shows a growing pile of cheap bikes.
There are conflicting accounts of how many refugees have crossed in this manner. Reuters reports roughly 170 in 2015, citing Norwegian police; but the Times claims that the number is over 600, with 420 crossing in September alone—also citing Norwegian police. Either way, Norwegian authorities appear worried that word of the route will spread and tempt refugees wary of the Mediterranean boat crossings that have so far killed hundreds.
Soon, however, winter weather may discourage passage via the northern route. Nikel and Kirkenes, the towns closest to the border, are both above the Arctic Circle. Daylight is fading quickly, and temperatures are dropping. Storskog is the only border crossing between the two nations.
But no one expects the Syrian crisis to be resolved by spring. As temperatures warm, and information about the northern route reaches more people, the refugees may be back on their bikes.
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