POJOWCE, Poland - In freezing subzero weather, in the middle of a Polish pine forest, Lt. Col. Konstantin German's thoughts turn to Jerusalem.
It's not just warm memories of the Middle Eastern sun and religious sentiments that he brings to his work. He is the commander of a border police unit on the outskirts of the village of Pojowce, on the Polish border with Belarus, Europe's last dictatorship. The defense tactics he observed while in Israel in 2001, when he worked as a security guard at the Polish Embassy in Tel Aviv, can help him here, where he oversees hundreds of kilometers of border.
Dressed in green khaki, he returns the traditional Polish two-fingered salute to another soldier. Then, looking toward a line of 30 Belarusian cars waiting to go home, he tells a group of visiting journalists that all is quiet on the eastern front. In a month, this border is due to become one of the final monitoring points for goods and people between the European Union and its eastern neighbor, Belarus.
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While Poland has been part of the European Union for three years, its citizens have not enjoyed the full travel privileges that some other members receive. All that is about to change. Poland is one of nine countries due on December 21 to enter the Schengen zone, where citizens can travel passport-free through designated European countries. The move significantly increases - from 15 to 24 - the number of EU and non-EU countries in the zone, named for the small Luxemburg town of Schengen, where the concept of a passport-free Europe was created in 1985.
For Poland, which has yet to join the euro zone and whose relations with the EU have often been tense, the move is viewed as a significant milestone helping cement its partnership with Western Europe. Travelers are delighted by the sudden freedom right before the Christmas holiday, but several Polish politicians are worried about the long-term impact of being one of the EU's final border guards. These politicians do not want to be Europe's fortress. They want the ease of travel without the burden of defense, so they - including newly elected Prime Minister Donald Tusk - favor extending EU borders eastward to include Ukraine. However, this is unlikely to happen for another decade.
Unless the EU border is pushed beyond Poland, its border police will be responsible for the largest stretch of land between the east and west, some 1,200 kilometers of terrain that winds along Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. So for some in Poland, Schengen is a lose-lose proposition. If the Polish border police and customs services are too efficient, they could irritate their eastern neighbors. On the other hand, if they show incompetence, terrorists and smuggled goods could reach Western European capitals from the Polish borders.
But standing under a gray sky, with Belarus to his right and Poland to his left, German appears unphased by the prospects of smugglers or illegal migrants. He walks reporters to the critical dividing line, which is quite secure even before Schengen, he assures them.
Without providing too many details, he points to the bare brown earth lightly dusted with snow, a strip of no-man's-land cut into the pine forest between Poland and Belarus.
German then points to the thermal cameras, which can detect any human movement up to 10 kilometers away and beam it back to the control room.
"These cameras help us perform our mission," he says, adding that more sophisticated equipment is to be installed. Another Polish security source says Israeli border equipment already has been tested successfully. At least two Israeli defense contractors, Magal - a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) - and Elbit hope to win some of the Polish border contracts, which are worth of tens of millions of dollars.
Opening risks
The Polish border policy is part of an elaborate EU system aimed at protecting borders. The task of coordinating this mission has been given to Brig. Gen. Ilkka Laitinen, executive director of Frontex, the EU's external border agency. The agency was created three years ago to increase border security and operational cooperation between EU member states.
As he stood in a suit, on the 22nd floor of a glass skyscraper overlooking Warsaw, Laitinen said that as a whole, fewer illegal Eastern European migrants entered Europe through Poland than other countries.
Laitinen is a former senior commander of the Finnish border police. He estimates that only 2,000 people have been detained trying to cross the Polish border. In comparison, 70,000 to 80,000 people are believed to have entered the EU illegally through Greece, he says.
Overall, the largest number of illegal migrants enter the EU through its airports, says Laitinen. "The main risk comes via airports, with imposters who use false documents or over-stayers who enter the borders legally as tourists," he says.
Regarding those who enter illegally by land, most come through Greece, followed by Slovakia, with a much smaller number coming through Poland, mostly through Ukraine, he says.
Creating a passport-free zone is a political choice that compromises security, Laitinen candidly admits. "The abolishment of border checks between the EU member states automatically means a reduced level of border security," even if there are complementary measures such as joint databases, he says. It doesn't matter which country is added to the zone, he says: "I am concerned every time there is no such instrument like border control in place."
Yet, in the town of Bielsk Podlaski, some 30 kilometers from the Belarusian border, the issue of illegal migration does not raise much concern among officials. Nor does smuggling.
The head of the Bielsk Podlaski district, Jerzy Slawomir Snarski, known locally as Starosta (the Elder), said there used to be a problem of goods being smuggled in from Belarus.
"The scale of smuggling has been reduced very strongly since the early 1990s, when there was a new [Polish] government installed. Right now all the serious smuggling is being controlled," he says.
However, the local hotel manager in the ancient town of 28,000 inhabitants tells a different story. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he says that because of the growing gap in the standards of living between Poland and Belarus, Belarusians try to improve their miserable lives by smuggling goods such as cigarettes, alcohol and oil. This thriving industry is based on the relatively cheap prices of these commodities in Belarus, and the accessibility of electronic goods in Poland.
"A Belarusian installs a double compartment in his car and puts 200 or 300 packs of cigarettes there, and sells them here in the Bielsk Podlaski market, earning two or three zlotys (one dollar) on each pack. And the same applies to oil," he says.
Yet, this is a cottage industry. The Polish and EU authorities are more concerned by the large smuggling rings, which make use of mafia-style methods on both sides of the border. German's border policemen, who are armed to protect themselves and their fellow custom officials from threats, sometimes believe their best weapon is the screwdriver: They halt trains entering from Belarus or Ukraine, and open the wagons' double compartments, where they find thousands of cigarettes hidden by smugglers.
Poland's problems are aggravated by the lack of cooperation from the Belarusian authorities. Krzysztof Jankowski, a local journalist, says the corruption in Belarus is so widespread that the border policemen practically take bribes in the open, and turn a blind eye to smugglers. Jankowski believes that the corruption goes all the way up the controversial and unpredictable Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who is considered the sick man of Europe.
This attitude can be seen from German's body language. As a professional soldier he does not make political comments and is very careful about his words. Yet, he is very proud that his men do their duty thoroughly, with the help of sophisticated equipment.
Nevertheless, the Belarusian drivers who were held at the Pojowce border post by rigid regulations blame the Polish guards. "Today we were lucky," said one driver. "We were kept by the Poles only for one hour. There are days when it takes five hours. This is a place God forgot about."
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