INTELLIGENCE AND MIGRATION
INTELLIGENCE AND MIGRATION

Summary/Abstract: As an intelligence practitioner, it has been my experience that migration has very different implications for different factors of decision-making factors: it can bring significant advantages from an economic and social point of view, it can be a humanitarian necessity, as well as an obligation to comply with the most basic human rights, but migration on a big scale is also a serious security concern, with potential of generating acute regional instability and insecurity. And those effects have significant impact on both target, and transit countries. Alongside other relevant institutions, intelligence too has a significant role in detecting threats associated with migratory waves, regardless if they consist of refugees or economic migrants. The highest risk is, of course, that of terrorism suspects infiltrating both afore-mentioned legitimate categories, while another hot topic related to this phenomenon is still the foreign fighters/ returnees problem. On one side, there is the thorny question of identifying potential terrorism suspects among millions of people, some fleeing war and inhumane living conditions. And this risk cannot be managed by any single authority alone. It takes close cooperation among local integration authorities, law enforcement and border control representatives, and intelligence agencies. There is also an acute need for further regional cooperation, but also of cooperation with other countries, some adherent to radically different ideologies, which poses several questions, varying from the protection of secrecy, to professional intelligence ethics. Fact is, only a joint effort can generate early warning and the implementation of adequate prevention and countering measures for all kinds of risks and threats related to this complex phenomenon of migration. And, in this regard, one of the most difficult issues we are facing is detecting a person’s actual identity, while a fake identity isn’t necessarily a signal for a hidden, dangerous agenda. There are also other issues at stake, weighting in on intelligence: the incumbent risks of refugee camps, starting with rioting, altercations with local authorities, and involvement of organized crime networks. Organized crime in Serbia and Macedonia, for example, has been facilitating illegal migrant traffic towards Western Europe for the past four years, becoming a serious concern for European intelligence. Other potential threats stem from the fact that some organizations claiming to help refugees in Greece and Turkey were reported to be actually run by Islamic groups connected to terrorist organizations. And there are also other adverse effects in the host societies which are in intelligence’s purview: the reactivation of far right ideas and groups, such as nationalist and supremacist groups with a potentially violent behavior. Intelligence is just a piece of the puzzle in dealing with the phenomenon, but it also has its limitations and needs to enhance its capacity in order to limit risks and threats. Those are some of the premises of a tense relation between migrants and intelligence, which I believe is worth further exploration.

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