Dire conditions for refugees trapped on Greek islands this winter, including overcrowded and unsafe camps, scant services, and a complex and arduous legal process, have spiraled into a humanitarian crisis.

On the islands, UNHCR says that 80 percent of the nearly 5,000 arrivals in September had fled war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, with two-thirds of them women and children.

We can't go back to Moria. The camp is very unsafe. We don't see human rights here - Afghan teenager and hunger striker

Even as the Raqqa and Mosul have been seized from control by the Islamic State (IS) group, many refugees in this latest wave have fled these and other IS-besieged areas and entered the chaos on islands like Lesvos, Samos and Chios already traumatised or physically wounded.

In Lesvos this week, tensions boiled over as security forces quashed late-night riots by refugee youth at the island's notorious camp at Moria, days after police officers themselves protested against the facility's dangerous work environment. Moria now holds over 6,000 people, more than triple its capacity.

At the port of Mytilini, Mayor Spyros Galinos led aggravated residents protesting against the Ministry of Migration's handling of crisis, while police evicted hunger strikers, including three teenage sisters from Afghanistan, from the town's main square.
"We can't go back to Moria," the oldest sibling from Helmand province said. "The camp is very unsafe. We don't see human rights here."

'Hard but neccessary'

Human rights and humanitarian aid groups have called for Greece to end its controversial containment policy under the EU-Turkey deal on 18 March 2016, by which the Greek government runs a complicated border procedure on the islands.

Lawyers from the Greek asylum service (GAS) and EU asylum support office (EASO) first evaluate whether a migrant can be ruled "inadmissible" for entry, before looking into individual protection claims.

Turkey is now considered "safe" for many nationalities to return to and file asylum from there, especially from north and west African states, as well as southeast Asia. The country's highest court, the Council of State, ruled two months ago that Syrians could be pushed back to Turkey too.
However, rights groups warn that those who are returned are often held in isolation in Turkish detention centres, with no cell phones and little understanding of the legal process. Additionally, Turkey is known to breach critical non-refoulement principles in international law, and forward asylum-seekers back to their home countries.

Admitting that conditions on the islands are "difficult," this week Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras nonetheless told French newspaper Le Figaro that the deal between the EU and Turkey "is hard but necessary. It helped put an end to the daily deaths in the Aegean."

Blocked borders, chaotic conditions

Greece has an estimated 60,000 migrants, housed in camps and apartments across cities and countryside on the mainland, stopped from moving further into Western Europe by blocked borders.

For one pregnant mother from southern Iraq, the miserable and chaotic conditions at Moria are all too real. Her family of six are squeezed into a thimble-size tent dug into the side of muddy olive grove outside the camp's razor wire perimeter; surrounded by makeshift shelters for mostly single men.

'We sewed our tent from canvas we found in the garbage - Iraqi widow from Baghdad living in Moria Camp

She said her 13-year-old daughter was threatened with sexual assault by teenage boys at the public toilets during the night and now sits inside the tent during day.

A neighbour on this cold and rainy hill is a widow from Baghdad, also travelling with four children. She depends for safety on her son, a 16-year-old boy whose fingers on one hand were chopped off by IS fighters.

"We sewed our tent from canvas we found in the garbage," she said as she held official papers marking her family "vulnerable". "The situation here is terrible."

The intent of the EU-Turkey deal to keep refugees out of Europe appears to be working. UNHCR says around 26,500 asylum seekers landed in Greece this year, down sharply from last year's figures of nearly 173,500.

In 2015, more than one million people arrived on European shores, mostly in Greece. Now the numbers are drastically down across both the eastern and the central Mediterranean routes due to EU strategies of keeping boats at bay.

In Greece this past summer, EU funding for services shifted from international charities to the national authorities, despite warnings of profound capacity gaps.

Organisations like UNHCR say the situation on the mainland is now stable. Despite lower numbers, it is the Greek islands - like Libya's detention centres and coastguard in the central Mediterranean Sea - that are again on the frontline of Europe's migration crisis.

"There is a combination of bad management, governance and complicity in making sure people don't arrive on Greek islands," said Giulia Lagana, an analyst with the Open Society European Policy Institute.

"There is a will within the EU to have a deterrent effect, and a general inability to manage funds and get a proper response from the Greek government."

'Nowhere to go'

In a dank and dirty squat outside of Mytilini that is often raided by the police, one 17-year-old boy from Pakistan attempts to clean a cooking area with a wounded hand.

Turned down for asylum status twice, he lives with a similarly vulnerable population of boys mostly from Afghanistan and is afraid to visit a clinic for treatment for fear of arrest and deportation. "I have nowhere to go - no country," he said.
Local residents in Lesvos have grown weary and impatient with arriving migrants, despite the financial benefits for local businesses from humanitarian groups and bulked up EU forces such as Frontex.

Volunteers like Stratus Pothas, who has remained committed to improving conditions for refugees on the historically left-leaning island, find themselves increasingly isolated.

They draw sympathetic parallels between the influx of nearly 3,000 refugees a day in 2015 and the mass expulsion of Greeks from Turkey almost 100 years ago.

Exacerbating tensions now on the island is the lack of communication, or "parallel worlds" of the international organisations and refugees on one side, and the island's residents on the other, Pothas said. "We have to build a movement across Lesvos - we have to unite the communities here."

235 people have been killed, according to a statement by the Egyptian Attorney General. The massacre was carried out at al-Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of Arish city. According to eye witnesses, there was a huge explosion, and then the terrorists opened fire on the worshippers as they prayed the Friday prayers on Nov. 24, 2017. Afterwards, the terrorists also set fire to cars, and shot at ambulances which rushed to the scene. The terrorists were dressed in military uniforms and drove a jeep, and fled with Egyptian security forces in pursuit.

On Nov. 23, 2017, the Egyptian state-run media announced they had arrested 29 suspects for 15 days, pending investigations into allegations that they engaged in espionage with Turkey, for the purpose of overthrowing the Egyptian government.

The Egyptian General Intelligence Agency stated the arrested spy network was financed by Turkey, but also supported by Qatar. The 29 member spy ring was directed by Turkish Intelligence officials, with direct Qatari coordination.

The Egyptian authorities uncovered the elaborate plot to take over power in Egypt by attacking state institutions, and the Turkish Intelligence and their global terror partner, the Muslim Brotherhood, were responsible.

In addition to the 29 arrested, there are 5 suspects abroad, who are charged with terrorism, money laundering, and illegal currency trading.

The arrested men allegedly formed a network, with members of the Muslim Brotherhood abroad, in order to destabilize Egypt and thus overthrow the government of Pres. Sisi, who is hated by the Muslim Brotherhood because he banned the group and labeled them a global terrorist organization.

Pres. Erdogan of Turkey also faced an attempt to overthrow his government in July of 2016. He is convinced that the US was behind the failed attempt to remove him from power. Turkey is a member of NATO and had been a close ally of the US, with a large US military base hosted on Turkish soil. When the US attack on Syria began in March 2011, for the purpose overthrowing Syria's Pres. Assad, Turkey and the US Pres. Obama were on the same team. However, the plan failed miserably, and left Turkey standing alone, as Pres. Erdogan continued his own Anti-Israeli political tirades, which infuriated Washington, DC as the Turkish-Israeli axis was crucial to American strategies in the Middle East.

Pres. Erdogan had supported the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Mursi, who was elected as President of Egypt, but now is in prison for murder. Ankara has kept up verbal attacks on the government of Pres. Sisi , while Cairo has answered back with accusations of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood who is considered a banned terrorist organization.

Additionally, on Nov. 23, 2017 Egyptian police killed three alleged terrorists in a shootout and arrested nine belonging to the Lewaa al-Thawra group, which is an armed group of the Muslim Brotherhood which surfaced in Egypt after the 2013 ouster of Pres. Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate who had been elected in Egypt by a rigged election engineered in part by a Washington, DC based NGO. The official of the NGO, who is American, received a 5 year prison sentence in absentia for her role, by the Egyptian court.

The police raid in Beheira was on a homemade bomb making facility, and the suspects opened fire as police approached, which then turned into a shootout, which left three Muslim Brotherhood terrorists dead, according to the Egyptian officials. The massacre at the al-Rawdah mosque the next day also used bombs and involved shooting, mirroring the Muslim Brotherhood group.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood have found safe haven in Turkey, and TV stations which broadcast Muslim Brotherhood propaganda, including verbal attacks on the Pres. Sisi government, are sanctioned by the Turkish broadcast authorities.

Turkey and Qatar worked hand in hand supporting the Radical Islamic terrorists in Syria. Both countries were integral partners with the US-NATO attack on Syria. However, once Pres. Trump took office, the foreign policy changed, and Turkey and Qatar were left holding the bag, and being blamed for their support of terrorism. After the elaborate Trump-Saudi terrorism summit, things changed rapidly and Qatar was singled out as the whipping boy of the region. It was Turkey who stood up in defense of Qatar, and came totheir aid in their time of need when faced with a blockade.

In a recent summit of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) General Assembly in the southern Mediterranean resort city of Antalya, Turkey, the Chairman of Qatar Red Crescent Society Mohammed Al-Maadheed has praised the cooperation with the Turkish Red Crescent. He stated, "At the international level, we are always in a very good relationship with Turkey because we have the same vision."

However, his colleague, the director of the Qatar Red Crescent's International Relief and Development Department, Khalid Nazem Diab, was recently named by the US as a global terrorist, and he was formerly listed similarly by the UN. Diab, an American of Syrian descent, is a financier of the armed militias in Syria, and his terrorist activity has expanded to several other hot spots.

Over three months ago, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar and issued thirteen demands; the key was that Qatar stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups. Qatar has funded terrorist groups in the Middle East for the last ten years, and participated in the attempts to overthrow major Arab governments. After Egypt's Mubarak was overthrown in 2011, it was Qatar who funded and gave refuge to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood's theological and spiritual leader.

Qatar was uncovered recently with transporting ISIS terrorists from Syria and Iraq to Libya, from whence they travel to Egypt to attack and massacre.

General Khalifa Hafter of the Libyan National Army has revealed to the Arab media that Qatar provides financial support to ISIS.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta also said recently that Qatar has a history of supporting terrorism. He said, "Qatar, frankly, has had a mixed record. We know they've provided support, financial support, for the Muslim Brotherhood, for terrorism, for Hamas, for elements of al-Qaida, the Taliban."

The terrorists are on a round-trip-ticket: they departed Libya in 2011, arrived in Syria, and now in 2017 are arriving again in Libya. This migration movement is facilitated by Qatar, and in coordination with their partner Turkey.

Dr. Abdelmonem Saeed said in his weekly column published in Ash-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, that the origin of terrorist ideology in the Muslim world finds itself in the Muslim Brotherhood. Saeed concluded: "The Brotherhood is the first incubator of terrorist groups and their major and global school."

63 members of the US Congress have asked Sec. of State Rex Tillerson to consider the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2017, because the Brotherhood threatens the U.S' national security interests and should be designated an outlawed terrorist group. The discussion on Capitol Hill concerning the Muslim Brotherhood has been bantered back and forth for years. During theObama administration the Muslim Brotherhood had received support and protection. The top aide to Hillary Clinton was Huma Abedin, who was the daughter of Saleha Abedin, who under Pres. Obama sat on the Presidency Staff Council of the International Islamic Council for Da'wa and Relief, a group that is chaired by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, now in exile in Qatar.


While the Muslim Brotherhood is an outlawed terrorist organization in many countries around the globe, it has remained protected and unhindered across America. With all eyes on Egypt and the recent massacre, it remains to be seen if the Muslim Brotherhood in USA may have worn out their welcome.