NATO ships to join smuggling battle

BRUSSELS — NATO will deploy ships to the Aegean Sea in an attempt to stop smugglers moving refugees from Turkey to Greece, the military alliance’s secretary- general said Thursday.

The ships will focus on monitoring the waterways and on providing intelligence to the European Union, which is taking the lead in attempting to stem the flow of refugees, according to NATO officials.

NATO will also enhance its surveillance of the Turkey- Syria border to monitor more closely the flow of refugees and the activities of smugglers, the secretary- general, Jens Stoltenberg, said. “This is not about stopping or pushing back refugee boats,” he said.

The operation puts the military alliance in the position of conducting what amounts to a law enforcement operation in the middle of a humanitarian and diplomatic crisis. Even if the military move ends up being largely symbolic, it represents the heightened concern over a crisis that has also become a geopolitical conundrum.

Gen. Philip Breedlove of the U. S. Air Force, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, has ordered ships to the Aegean, Stoltenberg said. The vessels are from Canada, Germany, Greece and Turkey, officials said.

Breedlove told reporters that many details of the operation are still being worked out, including how to deal with refugee boats that are intercepted and the rules of engagement. It is not clear, for example, how NATO will distinguish between legitimate refugees and the smugglers whom migrants have paid to facilitate their escape.

“This mission has literally come together in the last 20 hours, and I have been tasked now to go back and define the mission,” Breedlove said. “We had some very rapid decision making, and now we have to go out to do some military work.”

Three members of the alliance — Germany, Greece and Turkey — had asked NATO for help with the sea patrols, as they struggle to deal with the number of refugees who have fled violence in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq, Syria and other conflict- torn countries.

About 3,800 people died last year while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach the European Union. An additional 409 have died this year under the same circumstances, according to the International Organization for Migration.