The Sahara Desert's Forgotten Refugees

Johnson Varny is back after four months away, spent somewhere in the no man's land between Mali and Algeria. He'd been caught by the police here, who loaded him and 80 others onto the back of a truck, carting them back to Tin Sawatin.

 They spent two days and 700 miserable kilometers (400 miles) traveling southwest through nothing but sand and rocks. When they reached their destination -- a small collection of tin huts -- the police simply unloaded their human cargo and left them to fend for themselves. "They treated us like animals," says Varny, 32. 

Surrounded by nothing but sand and rocks, Tamanrasset, with its population of 100,000, has been a way station for emigrants from sub-Saharan Africa for two decades. At first a few dozen people passed through the city each year, and then suddenly it was hundreds, and now tens of thousands. Are they refugees, migrant workers, and immigrants? Definitions are fluid here.

 They stay for weeks or months, often even years. But then they move on, because ultimately, they all have the same goal: Europe, the continent that draws them north like iron filings pulled toward a magnet. Estimates say only around 15 to 20 percent actually arrive there. For the full article, click here.

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Source: Spiegel Online International