Back in 2003 I was down in the Patrida at Methoni. One evening I had coffee with a friend who owns a small hotel there and the guy who owned the one next door. Iraq was a hot topic. Both the Greeks predicted exactly this situation as a result of Bush and his neo-con buddies and their war. But of course, who in our government would listen to anyone who lived in the region. What would they know? In any event, this crowd will just love it in Germany and it having them there couldn’t happen to a nicer country!
As you might know, I was in a refugee camp in Lavrio in 1987. There was a steady supply of refugees from Iraq, Iran and Syria even then. Many of them Kurd resistance, convalescing of wounds. Another contingent was refugees from the Soviet block, mostly Albanians and Bulgarian Turks. It was believed that most of those attempting to enter Greece were turned back at the first police station up north; those arriving to Lavrio had the good sense of hiding all the way till they reached Athens.
Clashes with police were frequent, as were knife fights between different factions among the Middle Eastern refugees.
This, however, is an order of magnitude more severe. How did these people manage to get from the islands and the Aegean coast to the Macedonian border? It appears that Greece, aware that it cannot seal its coastline, just watched them trek northward, hoping for the outcome like this.