Escaping Syria's CharnelHouse

"He was a soldier in the Syrian army. All the men in his military unit were killed in the fighting and we realized we had to get him out. When he reached Turkey, the smugglers gave him three options to cross to Greece: doing the trip in a rubber dinghy cost $2,800 and a rowing boat $4,200. Or, for $5,700 he could be smuggled onto a tourist boat. We were worried about his safety. Another friend of mine tried to go by rowing boat a month before, but they overloaded the boat and it capsized. She and her daughter almost drowned."
"I know 110 Syrian people, friends and family, who have been smuggled out in the last few months."
Syrian Christian Hanna, speaking of a nephew who made his escape on a cruise ship

 It is no mere illusion that money cannot buy health and happiness; but it can buy safety and security and in the right circumstances and with the right connections, it can buy a conduit to another life. When the winds of political change auger threats to the safety and security or people slated for death, the exchange of money can pave the way for escape.

When conflict engages warring sides in a deadly attrition of combatants invariably the civilian population is sucked into the vortex of violence, both through deliberately considered expedient targets when they support one or the other combatants or when their non-combatant role is considered an expendable irritation as one of the warring sides attempts to eliminate the other.

Millions of ordinary Syrian civilians have been displaced as their nation's tyrant responds viciously and without distinction between armed opponents and vulnerable civilians whom ordinarily any government must by international law be seen to protect from violence, targeting its own civilian population for destruction on the theory that among them live the regime's opponents.

The success of the Syrian Free Army militias in taking towns and villages and even suburbs of Damascas, and the Islamist jihadis who have joined them in opposing the continued governance of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in infiltrating areas of the country, including the capital has seen Syrians from wealthy and poor districts alike made homeless in their countless, desperate numbers.

That, apart from the over hundred-thousand and growing numbers that have lost their lives. Millions have lost their livelihoods, their belongings, their homes and their farms and exist in a nightmare of listless waiting for the upheaval to come to an end. Those who remain homeless within the country also remain vulnerable to continued attacks both by the regime and by the al-Qaeda-aligned militias whose savagery outdistances even that of the loyal regime military.

Mistakenly, al-Qaeda recently beheaded a rebel soldier. Though much has been made of it, the Islamist foreign militias have murdered more than their share of others in the rebel militias, including the leaders who oppose their presence in the country, fearing the consequences of their determination to remake Syria in the event of the regime collapse, an Islamist caliphate.

A child pulls a suitcase as Syrian refugees arrive in Turkey at the Cilvegözü crossing gate of Reyhanlı, on August 31, 2013. (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)

Desperate Syrian refugees bemoaning their plight, live by their tens of thousands in crowded refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, their numbers steadily increasing, but there is a waxing-and-waning effect, as many who have been in the camps for months can no longer tolerate the conditions there and decide instead to return to Syria, to the places where they are most comfortable, despite the raging war conditions.

And still others, consolidate their desperation with the temptation of hope and set out on rickety boats to attempt to cross dangerous waters to seek haven in Europe, only to die in the process.

Money, though, can accomplish much, as an undercover investigation by The Daily Telegraph has recently detailed. A journalist posing as a prospective client approached a Beirut "travel agent" skilled in aiding well-paying clients escape the tragic misery that has become their lot in life.

But these are not bedraggled, penniless refugees such as those living without hope in the tented refugee camps in their bleak desert settings. These are the wealthy of Syria wearing designer couture with the casual entitlement of those with money, with the options open to them to select their chosen manner of travel and destination.

Lack of proper official documentation is not necessarily a huge detriment to them since with cash in hand they may flee their destroyed country by purchasing false passports or visas, and pay for contact made on their behalf with the professional smugglers who can guarantee them entry to Bulgaria, considered a gateway to Europe. From Bulgaria routes are open to Austria, Italy, or Sweden which has stated itself wide open to asylum for any Syrians who can succeed in reaching their shores.

The journey from Beirut to Bulgaria has a price tag of roughly $10,500 per person, and from then on to final destinations the rates vary. No one paying out those fees will anticipate travelling covertly, hoping to evade authorities. The journey, assures the "travel agent", is "comfortable. Anything can be facilitated for a "fee".

Even the aid of Europeans working at embassies. A boat trip from Turkey to Greece could initiate travel accommodation second to none in comfort and assurances that all will end well. "There is a Lebanese guy there (Bulgaria). He is a good guy, he has taken people before and they have arrived safely", assures the travel agent who adds that within the immigration sector he has contacts with authorities amenable to turning a blind eye. 

"Abu Ibrahim is an Iraqi smuggler here who is particularly famous. He has more than 5,000 stolen or fake passports. People come to him and he gives them the passport where the picture has a likeness. If you can't find a passport, they pay off employees on a yacht or cruise ship and you go to Sweden that way. That costs ($5,400)." 
Ahmed, Homs Syrian visiting friends in the Swiss Alps

"It took them six months to reach here and we paid almost euros 40,000 ($56,000). In Greece they had to wait months for the smuggler to find a match. Eventually the smuggler got hold of the passports for a family with two boys and one girl. My friend has two girls and a boy, so, for the airport, they disguised he youngest child as a boy. It's illegal, but what other choice do they have?
"Syria is not a place to bring their children now."

A child looks out of a window of an airplane arriving from Syria at the airport in Hanover, Germany, September 11. Over a hundred Syrian refugees mostly women and children were preparing to leave Lebanon on a flight to Germany the first to be part of a mass relocation program. (Holger Hollemann/EPA)