Cold comfort: The lucrative route from the Middle East to Minsk

Travel agents and migrants who have reached Poland describe how thousands are making the journey

- Lorenzo Tondo BIALYSTOK and Martin Chulov BEIRUT

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. Ferhad had boarded a direct flight to Minsk from Erbil, in northern Iraq. "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.

Ferhad Nabo is one of at least nine people who have died since the beginning of the border standoff between Poland and Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, has been accused of deliberately provoking a new refugee crisis in Europe by organising the movement of people from the Middle East in revenge for EU sanctions on his authoritarian regime.

Thousands of Iraqi Kurd and Syrian families are living in small tents hidden among the trees between the two countries, where night-time temperatures fall below zero. Many more are preparing to attempt the perilous journey, queueing outside travel agencies, while Nabo's family is waiting for his body to be returned from Poland.