‘It’s risky but I’ll go anyway’: migrants desperate to reach Europe via Belarus

Thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Syrians are living in tents near Polish border, and thousands more want to join them

On a dark forest road last month, Polish police were in pursuit of a speeding car that had skipped a checkpoint. The car's driver was a people smuggler, and his passengers three Syrians who had paid thousands for him to take them to Germany, the final leg of their journey from the Middle East via Belarus. A truck coming in the opposite direction tried to dodge them but could not. Ferhad Nabo, 33, a married father of two from Kobane, was killed instantly in the crash.

He left Syria, like many others, to reach Europe," said his cousin Rashwan Nabo, a Syrian humanitarian worker. From Erbil, in northern Iraq, Ferhad had boarded a direct flight to Minsk. In Raqqa, Damascus and Aleppo, word has been spreading for months that the easiest and fastest way to reach Europe is a direct flight to Belarus," his cousin said.