The Daily Telegraph - 20.08.2019

T

he search for a
breakthrough in the
deadlocked Brexit
negotiations has thus far
foundered on the question
of borders – specifically
the border between Ireland and
Northern Ireland, and how it could
remain “invisible” after the UK quits
the EU trading regime.
Brexiteers have always harboured
suspicions that the EU’s apparent
obsession with the “integrity” of its
borders was overstated – used as a
convenient excuse to keep Britain
“trapped” in the EU’s customs union
and aligned with EU regulations to
ensure a soft Brexit.
But such British protestations cut
little ice with many EU member states,
particularly those – like Poland – that
only recently joined the world’s largest
trading bloc and recall being forced to
erect much more stringent borders
despite public opposition.
In the border village of Medyka on
Poland’s frontier with Ukraine, some
210 miles south-east of Warsaw, the
hard evidence of European checks and
controls is plain to see. Along the dusty
roadside, a queue of trucks, vans and
cars stretches back for more than a
mile as weary traders wait to cross the
border, each of them with a stack of
pre-printed customs papers sitting on
their dashboards.
“It’s a nightmare now,” says Anna

Dolyk, the 44-year-old manager of the

truckstop pizza parlour, where bored

drivers and passengers gather for a

beer and a bite to eat. “The EU has

brought nothing good for this place.”

She recalls the period in the

Nineties, after the collapse of the

Soviet Union, when Poland’s border

with Ukraine was a more freewheeling

affair, with meat smugglers making a

healthy living bringing fresh cuts into

Poland. Not any more.

“You cannot bring a sandwich

across the border now,” says Maria

Panylk, a 49-year-old housewife who

is standing waiting for a lift to the

nearby town of Przemyśl where she

can trade her weekly border allowance

of one bottle of Ukrainian vodka and

two packets of cheap cigarettes.

Trudging the other way, back out of

Poland, is a steady stream of Ukrainian

foot-passengers lugging bags of cheap

Polish food and new electrical goods

on which they are able to claim a 22

per cent VAT refund.

In short, the border was fully

imposed by Brussels regardless of the

impact on local communities, such

was the price of the EU membership

Poland took up in 2004.

Przemysław Biskup, a senior analyst

at the Polish Institute of International

Affairs in Warsaw, recalls the political

rift that the EU’s border demands

caused from 2000-2004 when Poland

was economically divided between a

poor east and a wealthier west.

“There was an intense local

transborder trade, which was

important for local economies of

Poland’s eastern provinces,” he says.

“It had to be disassembled by the rise

of the EU external border. Since

Poland didn’t join the Schengen

free-movement zone immediately

upon accession, there was the carrot of

World news

Just look at pollution off

Biarritz, G7 leaders told

Campaigners are lobbying G7 leaders,

who are to attend a summit in the

French seaside resort of Biarritz this

week, to ban detergents that cause

marine pollution.

Environmentalists say there is a

“dead zone” in the Bay of Biscay off

Biarritz, which they claim is caused by

a “chemical cocktail” of detergents

discharged into the sea.

Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron,

the French president, and Angela

Merkel, the German chancellor, need

only look out to sea when they are in

Biarritz to realise the magnitude of the

problem, the campaigners say.

WORLD BULLETIN

Cambodia announces

ban on online gambling

Pakistan army chief gets

three more years at top

Cambodia has announced it is banning

online gambling, which helped attract

a wave of Chinese investment in

casinos in the country.

Making the announcement, the

Cambodian government said that the

industry had been used by foreign

criminals to extort money.

The coastal city of Sihanoukville has

emerged as a particular centre for

gambling and many of the Chinese-

run casinos there have online

operations.

China, Cambodia’s close ally, has

also been trying to crack down on

cross-border gambling.

Pakistan’s powerful army chief has

been given a three-year extension, only

days after tension with India again

flashed over disputed Kashmir.

Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa’s tenure was

extended “in view of the regional

security environment”, a statement

said, but the move is likely to increase

opposition claims that the dominant

military is tightening its grip.

The military denies meddling in

politics. However, during Gen Bajwa’s

leadership it was accused of electoral

manipulation to bring Prime Minister

Imran Khan to power, and media

censorship.

Taliban taps new income stream from drugs

By Ben Farmer in Islamabad

AFGHANISTAN is seeing a rise in
methamphetamine drug production,
potentially providing a new revenue
stream for the Taliban in a country al-
ready notorious for opium and heroin.
The United Nations said seizures of
the powerful stimulant had increased
exponentially over the past five years

but had “gone off the scale” in 2019.

Taliban insurgents who are already es-

timated to make millions from opium

are now taxing criminal gangs making

“meth” in western Afghanistan.

Annual seizures by the Afghan au-

thorities used to add up to no more

than a few kilos. But in 2018 they hit

180kg (400lb) and in just the first half of

2019 rocketed past half a ton (650kg).

A study of drugs labs hit by US air-

strikes in western Afghanistan found

many were making meth as well as pro-

cessing opium. David Mansfield, au-

thor of the study conducted by the

London School of Economics, said Af-

ghanistan had developed a burgeoning

meth industry, apparently with exper-

tise from neighbouring Iran. He said

that Afghans who worked in labs in

Iran learnt the skills and returned to

“set up shop” at home.

Gangs in Iran had typically used

over-the-counter medicines to extract

the active ingredient, pseudoephed-

rine. But in Afghanistan a similar sub-

stance is found in a local bush called

ephedra, potentially creating another

drug crop.

American and Afghan officials said

that meth-producing labs were among

68 drug factories hit by airstrikes in a

May campaign to cut off funding to the

insurgents. Mr Mansfield said the

international coalition often overesti-

mated how much revenue the Taliban

raised from taxing drug production in

areas it controlled, but added that the

insurgents now appeared to be levying

a flat tax on “powdah” production,

whether heroin or meth.

Drug trafficking analysts have been

unable to ascertain the destination of

the meth being smuggled out of the

country. Some is consumed within Af-

ghanistan but shipments have been

known to be intercepted while heading

for Iran and Pakistan, the UN said. Ex-

perts do not know if it is then packaged

for shipments further afield.

Mr Mansfield said: “ If this ‘ephedra

model’ is reducing costs without hav-

ing a significant effect on quality, you

would expect this product to travel.

“It certainly seems to be produced

for export.”

u The Taliban is on the brink of an ex-

pected deal with the US to end 18 years

of fighting, it was reported, though Af-

ghanistan remains under a growing

threat, this time from an Isil affiliate.

Dozens of people were wounded in a

series of bomb attacks at restaurants

and public spaces yesterday – Afghani-

stan’s independence centenary – in

Jalalabad, 65 miles east of Kabul. It

came a day after 63 people died in the

capital in a bomb attack at a wedding.

Meth production spirals

to become a significant

revenue source for

insurgents in Afghanistan

Queues and endless forms: a hard

lesson for Poland about EU borders

Schengen membership that was

driving communities in eastern Poland

to accept the EU aquis [laws] on the

external border. Many people

switched their economic activities

from the transborder trade to taking

jobs in ‘old EU’ economies, such as the

construction sector.”

The new border brought change.

The Polish border force rapidly

professionalised, bad for smugglers,

but it encouraged others. “The way of

thinking changed, but this created

space for legal business to develop.

Everyone has to adapt,” says Maciej

Debicki, head of the Przemyśl

chamber of commerce.

Such relatively recent history leaves

little sympathy, however, among many

EU member states for British or Irish

special pleading on the management

of the internal border that will become

an external border of the EU after

Brexit. When the UK Government

proposed that its technological

“maxfac” solution should include

exemptions for some 80 per cent of all

local cross-border trade in Ireland, the

plan was ridiculed by EU officials. At

one meeting of Brexit ambassadors,

they were reportedly trading scathing

jokes about it, with one suggesting

they should all quit their jobs and open

a business in Northern Ireland if that

was the planned regime.

Back in Medyka, the wait for

van-sized traders to cross the border

reaches beyond 12 hours after one of

the two vehicle-weighing scales

breaks down. Among the waiting

drivers is 50-year-old Marek carrying

a load of leather goods worth some

€16,500 (£15,100), according to the

thick sheaf of pre-printed customs

forms detailing the product categories.

“I’ve been here since midnight, and

now it is noon. You have to have a

different form for each kind of leather

goods,” he says, before holding up a

second set of forms and rolling his

eyes. “These are for all the leather

stretchers I use to transport the goods.

I need those papers to reimport the

stretchers or I could get charged duty

on them on the way back.”

We hear many versions of the same

story – a postal van with packages

worth €18,500 (£16,900), with a

customs declaration form for each,

and a trucker with an empty trailer

who still had to wait 13 hours to cross.

The prospect of an Irish border after

Brexit had reached even to this

farthest eastern edge of the EU.

Among the drivers, 49-year-old

Vasili, who had been on a recent trip

to Belfast, says: “I was listening to

people talking about the border issue.

I didn’t say anything, but I thought

they didn’t really understand what a

border means.”

Dispatch

By Peter Foster
EuropE Editor
in Medyka, Poland

The EU border

between Ukraine

and Poland. Right,

Ukrainians queue at

the checkpoint

‘There was

an intense

local

transborder

trade that

had to be

disassembled

by the rise of

the EU

border’ AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Unstoppable

Firefighters in Gran

Canaria retreated

from wildfires

yesterday. “Human

beings are not

capable of stopping

a fire as intense as

this,” said Federico

Grillo, the head of

emergency

services. Sending

firefighters into the

Tamadaba natural

park would be

“suicide”, he added.

They hope to

prevent the fire

spreading to urban

areas, such as the

northern coastal

town of Agaete, but

villages further

inland have already

been evacuated.

CEN/GRANCANARIACAB

12 ***^ Tuesday 20 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

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