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adriana
The Adriana Shipwreck and the Costs of the Forever Wars
Framing many of the migrant’s deaths as in some sense war-related should force us to pay attention to ways in which fighting in or around their countries of origin might have impacted their fates.
Jul 20, 2023
Seeking news coverage about the Adriana, the boat crowded with some 700 people migrating to Europe to seek a better life that sank in mid-June off the coast of Greece, I googled “migrant ship” and got 483,000 search results in one second. Most of the people aboard the Adriana had drowned in the Mediterranean, among them about 100 children.
I did a similar search for the Titan submersible, which disappeared the same week in the North Atlantic. That kludged-together pseudo-submarine was taking four wealthy men and the 19-year-old son of one of them to view the ruins of the famed passenger ship, the Titanic. They all died when the Titan imploded shortly after it dove. That Google search came up with 79.3 million search results in less than half a second.
Guardian journalist Arwa Mahdawi wrote a powerful column about the different kinds of attention those two boats received. As she astutely pointed out, we in the anglophone world could hardly help but follow the story of the Oceangate submersible’s ill-fated journey. After all, it was the lead news story of the week everywhere and commanded the attention of three national militaries (to the tune of tens of millions of dollars) for at least five days.
Why do people care so much about rich men who paid $250,000 apiece to make what any skilled observer would have told them was a treacherous journey, but not hundreds of migrants determined to better their families’ lives, even if they had to risk life itself to reach European shores?
The Adriana was quite another story. As Mahdawi pointed out, the Greek Coast Guard seemed preoccupied with whether the migrants on that boat even “wanted” help, ignoring the fact that many of those aboard the small trawler were children trapped in the ship’s hull and that it was visibly in danger.
On the other hand, few, she pointed out, questioned whether the men in the submersible wanted help—even though its hull was ludicrously bolted shut from the outside prior to departure, making rescue especially unlikely. Glued to the coverage like many Americans, I certainly didn’t think they should be ignored, since every life matters.
But why do people care so much about rich men who paid $250,000 apiece to make what any skilled observer would have told them was a treacherous journey, but not hundreds of migrants determined to better their families’ lives, even if they had to risk life itself to reach European shores? Part of the answer, I suspect, lies in the very different reasons those two groups of travelers set out on their journeys and the kinds of things we value in a world long shaped by Western military power.
An American Preoccupation With the Military
I suspect that we Americans are easily drawn to whatever seems vaguely military in nature, even a “submersible” (rather than a submarine) whose rescue efforts marshaled the resources and expertise of so many U.S. and allied naval forces. We found it anything but boring to learn about U.S. Navy underwater rescue ships and how low you can drop before pressure is likely to capsize a boat. The submersible story, in fact, spun down so many military-style rabbit holes that it was easy to forget what even inspired it.
I’m a Navy spouse and my family, which includes my partner, our two young kids, and various pets, has been moving from one military installation to another over the past decade. In the various communities where we’ve lived, during gatherings with new friends and extended family, the overwhelming interest in my spouse’s career is obvious.
Typical questions have included: “What’s a submarine’s hull made out of?” “How deep can you go?” “What’s the plan if you sink?” “What kind of camo do you wear?” And an unforgettable (to me at least) comment from one of our kids: “That blue camo makes you guys look like blueberries. Do you really want to hide if you fall in the water? What if you need to be rescued?”
In our militarized culture, we seize on the cosmetic parts like the nature of submarines because they’re easier to talk about than the kind of suffering our military has actually caused across a remarkably wide stretch of the planet in this century.
Meanwhile, my career as a therapist for military and refugee communities and as a co-founder of Brown University’s Costs of War Project, which might offer a strange antiwar complement to my spouse’s world, seldom even makes it into the conversation.
Aside from the power and mystery our military evokes with its fancy equipment, I think many Americans love to express interest in it because it seems like the embodiment of civic virtue at a time when otherwise we can agree on ever less. In fact, after 20 years of America’s war on terror in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, references to our military are remarkably widespread (if you’re paying attention).
In our militarized culture, we seize on the cosmetic parts like the nature of submarines because they’re easier to talk about than the kind of suffering our military has actually caused across a remarkably wide stretch of the planet in this century. Most of us will take fancy toys like subs over exhausted servicemembers, bloodied civilians, and frightened, malnourished migrants all too often fleeing the damage of our war on terror.
Migration During Wartime
We live in an era marked by mass migration, which has increased over the past five decades. In fact, more people are now living in a country other than where they were born than at any other time in the last half-century.
Among the major reasons people leave their homes as migrants are certainly the search for education and job opportunities, but never forget those fleeing from armed conflict and political persecution. And of course, another deeply related and more significant reason is climate change and the ever more frequent and intense national disasters like flooding and drought that it causes or intensifies.
The migrants on the Adriana had left Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Palestine, and Pakistan for a variety of reasons. Some of the Pakistani men, for instance, were seeking jobs that would allow them to house and feed their desperate families. One Syrian teenager, who ended up drowning, had left the war-torn city of Kobani, hoping to someday enter medical school in Germany—a dream that was unlikely to be realized where he lived due to bombed-out schools and hospitals.
All in all, the Costs of War Project estimates that the war on terror has led to the displacement of at least 38 million people, many of whom fled for their lives as fighting consumed their worlds.
In my mind’s eye, however, a very specific shadow loomed over so many of their individual stories: America’s forever wars, the series of military operations that began with our 2001 invasion of Afghanistan (which ended up involving us in air strikes and other military activities in neighboring Pakistan as well) and the similarly disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003. It would, in the end, metastasize into fighting, training foreign militaries, and intelligence operations in some 85 countries, including each of the countries the Adriana’s passengers hailed from. All in all, the Costs of War Project estimates that the war on terror has led to the displacement of at least 38 million people, many of whom fled for their lives as fighting consumed their worlds.
The route taken by the Adriana through the central Mediterranean Sea is a particularly common one for refugees fleeing armed conflict and its aftermath. It’s also the most deadly route in the world for migrants—and getting deadlier by the year. Before the Adriana went down, the number of fatalities during the first three months of 2023 had already reached its highest point in six years, at 441 people. And during the first half of this year alone, according to UNICEF, at least 289 children have drowned trying to reach Europe.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned—even if on a distinctly small scale—as a therapist in military and refugee communities, it’s this: A painful history almost invariably precedes anyone’s decision to embark on a journey as dangerous as those the migrants of that ill-fated ship undertook. Though I’m sure many on it would not have said that they were fleeing “war,” it’s hard to disentangle this country’s war on terror from the reasons so many of them made their journeys.
One Syrian father who drowned had been heading for Germany, hoping to help his three-year-old son, who had leukemia and needed a treatment unavailable in his devastated country, an area that the U.S. invasion of Iraq first threw into chaos and where war has now deprived millions of healthcare. Of course, it hardly need be noted that his death only ensures his family’s further impoverishment and his son’s possible death from cancer, not to mention what could happen if he and his mom were forced to make a similar journey to Europe to get care.
Pakistan’s War Story
As many as 350 migrants on the Adriana were from Pakistan where the U.S. had been funding and fighting a counterinsurgency war—via drones and air strikes—against Islamist militant groups since 2004. The war on terror has both directly and indirectly upended and destroyed many lives in Pakistan in this century. That includes tens of thousands of deaths from air strikes, but also the effects of a refugee influx from neighboring Afghanistan that stretched the country’s already limited resources, not to speak of the deterioration of its tourism industry and diminished international investments. All in all, Pakistan has lost more than $150 billion dollars over the past 20 years in that fashion while, for ordinary Pakistanis, the costs of living in an ever more devastated country have only increased. Not surprisingly, the number of jobs per capita decreased.
One young man on the migrant ship was traveling to Europe to seek a job so that he could support his extended family. He had sold 26 buffalo—his main source of income—to pay for the journey and was among the 104 people who were finally rescued by the Greek Coast Guard. After that rescue, he was forced to return to Libya where he had no clear plan for how to make it home. Unlike most of the other Pakistanis on the Adriana, he managed to escape with his life, but his is not necessarily a happy ending. As Zeeshan Usmani, Pakistani activist and founder of the antiwar website Pakistan Body Count, points out, “After you’ve sacrificed so much in search of a better life, you’d likely rather drown than return home. You’ve given all you have.”
Rest Stops in a Militarized World
We certainly learned much about the heady conversations between the Titan’s OceanGate CEO, his staff, and certain estranged colleagues before that submersible embarked on its ill-fated journey, and then about the dim lighting and primitive conditions inside the boat. Barely probed in media coverage of the Adriana, however, was what it was like for those migrants to make the trip itself.
What particularly caught my attention was the place from which they left on their journey to hell and back—Libya. After all, that country has quite a grim history to be the debarkation point for so many migrants. A U.S.-led invasion in 2011 toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi, leaving the country’s remote beaches even less policed than they had been, while Libya itself was divided between two competing governments and a collection of affiliated militias.
In such a chaotic setting, as you might imagine, conditions for migrants transiting through Libya have only continued to deteriorate. Many are kept in warehouses by local authorities for weeks, even months, sometimes without basic needs like blankets and drinking water. Some are even sold into slavery to local residents, and those lucky enough to move on toward European shores have to deal with smugglers whose motives and practices, as the Adriana’s story reminds us, are anything but positive (and sometimes terrorizing).
Consider how you would feel if you’d been adrift at sea, hungry, thirsty, and fearful for your life, when men in another boat armed and wearing masks approached you, further rocking a boat that was already threatening to capsize.
Onward, to the sea itself: When, some 13 hours after the first migrants called for help, the Greek Coast Guard finally responded, it sent a single ship with a crew that included four armed and masked men. The Guard alleges that many of the migrants refused help, waving the men away. Whether or not this was the case, I can imagine their fears that the Greeks, if not smugglers, might at least be allied with them. They also might have feared that the Guard would set them and their children, however young, on rafts to continue drifting at sea, as had happened recently with other migrant ships approached by the Greeks.
If that sounds far-fetched to you, then consider how you would feel if you’d been adrift at sea, hungry, thirsty, and fearful for your life, when men in another boat armed and wearing masks approached you, further rocking a boat that was already threatening to capsize. My guess is: not good.
Uncounted War Deaths
It would be far-fetched to count people like the migrants on the Adriana as “war deaths.” But framing many of their deaths as in some sense war-related should force us to pay attention to ways in which fighting in or around their countries of origin might have impacted their fates. Paying attention to war’s costs would, however, force us Westerners to confront the blood on our hands, as we not only supported (or at least ignored) this country’s wars sufficiently to let them continue for so long, while also backing politicians in both the U.S. and Europe who did relatively little (or far worse) to address the refugee crises that emerged as a result.
To take language used by the Costs of War Project’s Stephanie Savell in her work on what the project calls “indirect war deaths,” migrants like the drowned Syrian teenager seeking an education in Europe could be considered “doubly uncounted” war deaths because they weren’t killed in battle and, as in his case and others like it, their bodies will not be recovered from the Mediterranean’s depths.
When we see stories like his, I think we should all go deeper in our questioning of just what happened, in part by retracing those migrants’ steps to where they began and trying to imagine why they left on such arduous, dangerous journeys. Start with war-gutted economies in countries where millions find slim hope of the kind of decent life that you or I are likely to take for granted, including having a job, a home, health care, and safety from armed violence.
I’ll bet that if you do ask more questions, those migrants will start to seem not just easier to relate to but like true adventurers on this planet—and not those billionaires who paid $250,000 apiece for what even I could have told you was an unlikely shot at making it to the ocean floor alive.
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The Human Beings Who Died on the Adriana Were Treated Like Their Lives Didn't Matter
Meanwhile, the rescue effort mounted for wealthy tourists lost on the Titan shows what’s possible when those in danger are treated like do.
Jun 29, 2023
Recent weeks saw two terrible tragedies at sea.
In one, five explorers died when the Titan submersible imploded in the North Atlantic. In the other, over 600 refugees — most of them women and children — drowned in the Mediterranean when their fishing trawler sank.
Both voyages ended in a heartbreaking loss of life. But there were vast differences between the two tragedies in media attention and government response, highlighting just how unequal our world has become.
On board the Titan were two billionaires and one of their sons, along with a CEO and research director of companies tied to undersea adventure tourism. They were headed for the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank 111 years ago.
How many might have been saved if immigration policy were grounded in keeping migrants safe, rather than keeping them out?
When the Titan lost contact with its mother ship less than two hours after descent began, calls for assistance immediately went out. Help came quickly from the U.S. and Canadian coast guards and navies, along with support from France and offers from other countries.
Sonar-equipped planes, undersea diving equipment, trained divers, and search ships of every variety steamed to the area. Meanwhile, breathless coverage of the tragedy stayed on the front pages around the world as TV news counted down the hours of oxygen left in the small craft.
The rescue cost is unknown, but initial estimates are in the area of $100 million — a cost that will be footed by taxpayers.
Compare this to the story of the Adriana, which sank off the coast of Greece just two days after the Titan went down. The Adriana was thought to be carrying over 700 people, of whom just 104 survived. No women or children were among the survivors.
The limited news coverage of the Adriana included nothing like the up-close-and-personal human stories of the lives and dreams of the five men aboard the Titan. Except for a few, we don’t even know their names.
They were desperate migrants, many of them refugees, from countries wracked by war, poverty, climate disasters, and human rights violations — including Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Pakistan, and Egypt. They were sailing from Libya in a decrepit fishing boat, hoping to make it to Europe alive.
The Greek coast guard quickly realized the ship was in trouble, but didn’t try to rescue the desperate passengers on the deck. Greek authorities made claims — vehemently disputed by ship captains nearby, migrant advocates, and the passengers themselves — that the ship had turned down offers of assistance.
The ship had been in distress almost two days before it sank, but help didn’t come until it was too late. How many might have been rescued with one-tenth the resources that were rushed to save the five billionaires and millionaires on the Titan?
Europe’s racist approach to migration starts and ends with preventing African, Asian, and Arab migrants from entering European territory. But it’s not just a European problem.
Indeed, the continent’s policies on migrants bear a tragic — indeed criminal — similarity to our own in the United States. As thousands of desperate refugees and migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean, thousands more from Central America, the Caribbean, and beyond have died trying to cross the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border.
How many might have been saved if immigration policy were grounded in keeping migrants safe, rather than keeping them out?
The rescue effort mounted for those lost on the Titan shows what’s possible when those in danger are treated like they matter. U.S. officials should work just as hard to rescue poor and endangered migrants as they do the billionaires — their lives matter just as much.
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Response to Titan and Adriana Disasters Reveals a Titanic Disparity
All travelers, whether migrants or millionaires, deserve rescue.
Jun 25, 2023
Titan and Adriana are two vessels recently lost at sea, four days and 4,000 miles apart. The five men who lost their lives on the Titan have been getting wall-to-wall coverage in the media worldwide. Meanwhile, the estimated 700 who died when the Adriana sank off the coast of Greece, mostly women and children, have been essentially forgotten.
Passengers on the Titan were wealthy; two were billionaires. Each had paid $250,000 for an adventure of a lifetime, a deepsea dive to view the wreckage of the Titanic, the “unsinkable” passenger liner that sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. Those crammed onto the ramshackle Adriana fishing boat were seeking not adventure but refuge from war, poverty, climate change, or any of the many other life-threatening crises that force people to flee their homes with little more than the clothes on their back. They paid human traffickers to ferry them from Libya to Europe.
Perhaps the most notable difference between these two disasters was how the world responded to them. Governments immediately spent millions mounting a search and rescue operation to find the Titan, submerged somewhere in the north Atlantic, deep below an area twice the size of Connecticut. Media outlets provided continuous coverage, with one launching a countdown clock predicting when the submersible’s oxygen would run out. The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy and the Canadian government sent planes and boats to the search area. France and Canada each deployed deep sea robots. People around the world watched and waited breathlessly.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that close to 1,200 have perished so far this year in dangerous sea crossings to Spain, Italy, and Greece. These deaths, about the same number as died on the Titanic, are surely an undercount.
Meanwhile, in Greece, officials knew the exact location of the overcrowded, disabled Adriana. Shocking details are now emerging of its sinking on June 14. First-hand accounts, reported in El País, suggest the Greek Coast Guard could have saved the doomed vessel’s 400-750 passengers, but opted not to.
El País reported:
“The Greek authorities had been aware of the ship’s presence since 11 am on June 13 and, in addition to keeping it under surveillance, ordered two ships in the area to deliver food and water to those onboard. They never activated a rescue operation, despite the conditions in which the ship was sailing, not even when the ship’s engine broke down at 1:40 am. Between 2:04 am and 2:19 am, the old metal fishing trawler jolted violently and then disappeared right before the eyes of the Greek coastguard. It is still not clear what happened, but the sea swallowed everything up.”
(The Adriana’s sinking at 2:19 am grimly paralleled that of the Titanic, which sank at 2:20 am. Both sank in water over 12,000 feet deep.)
Most or all of Adriana’s roughly 100 survivors were helped not by Greek authorities but by a private yacht that had responded to the distress call. Among the survivors were 47 Syrians, 43 Egyptians, 12 Pakistanis, and two Palestinians. All were men, as they were traveling above deck on the Adriana. Hundreds of women and children were trapped below deck, and went down with the ship.
“I am struck by the alarming level of tolerance to serious human rights violations against refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants that has developed across Europe,” Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, said on June 19, one day before World Refugee Day. “Reports of human rights violations… are now so frequent that they hardly register in the public consciousness.”
Mijatović continued, “Last week’s shipwreck off the Greek coast is yet another reminder that, despite many warnings, the lives of people at sea remain at risk in the face of insufficient rescue capacity and coordination, a lack of safe and legal routes and solidarity, and the criminalisation of NGOs trying to provide life-saving assistance. Elsewhere in Europe, pushbacks at land and sea borders, violence against refugees and migrants, denial of access to asylum, deprivation of humanitarian assistance, and the harassment of refugee rights defenders, are widely documented.”
The International Migration Organization’s Missing Migrant Project puts the Mediterranean migrant death toll at over 27,000 since 2014. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that close to 1,200 have perished so far this year in dangerous sea crossings to Spain, Italy, and Greece. These deaths, about the same number as died on the Titanic, are surely an undercount. Just this week, 39 migrants are believed to have drowned attempting to cross from Morocco to Spain’s Canary Islands.
The Titan and the Adriana disasters were very different, but both were preventable. All travelers, whether migrants or millionaires, deserve rescue. The global response to the Titan’s disappearance should be the model for how we respond to migrant vessels in distress. Knowing the names and the plights of those seeking refuge is what makes the world care.
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