The trail of death from Senegal

Threading our way down to the beach, Magatie Diagne, aged 25, says that of the local football team "half are dead and the other half in Madrid". This is Thiaroye-sur-Mer, once a fishing village on the Senegalese coast, now a suburb of Dakar, the country’s capital. Diagne is a lucky man, because he is alive, but he does not see it that way. Here they say "Barcelona or Death" - and they mean it.

The statistics are stark. In 2006 more than 31,000 Africans, mostly Senegalese succeeded in getting to the Canary Islands on long, wooden, pirogue fishing boats. The Spanish authorities reckon, how-ever, that some 6,000 died in the attempt. Another 6,800 have since been sent back to Senegal.

Diagne paid €700 to get on a pirogue to the Canaries. He was packed in, sardine-like, with 81 others. Fifteen days after they had left they ran out of food and water. The two hand-held satellite navigation systems they had broke. "We were all crying. It was a real catastrophe. There was a captain but he couldn’t do anything. We were lost at sea. I had no hope. I thought we would all die." Of those who left with him, ten died.

Once in the Canaries Diagne was interned in a camp. After a month, in October, he was handcuffed and put on a plane with others. They thought they were being flown to Madrid. In fact they were being flown home. Looking out to sea Diagne says he wants to try again, despite the risks. It is easy to see why. In Thiaroye-sur-Mer, just as everywhere else in Senegal, it is easy to spot the nice house of those who have got a son or a father in Europe sending home money.

It need not be much. According to Rabbia Bekkar-Lacoste, who works for a French research institute in Dakar, even if the Senegalese who reach Spain or Italy (their main destinations,) have modest jobs, "being very poor there is very rich here".

For now, the wave of migrants braving the Atlantic to reach the Canaries has died down, but not entirely. About a hundred were feared drowned trying to make the crossing just before Christmas. One reason the numbers have gone down is because the weather is harsher now, but there is another reason too. That is that the border of the European Union has extended, quite literally, to the coast of western Africa.

Ask most Europeans what Frontex is and they are likely to have no idea. But ask a Senegalese and his or her reaction will be quite different. After all, the EU’s newest agency, based in Warsaw, whose job it is to co-ordinate "the operational co-operation between member states in the field of border security," has been a big news story here.

Last June, the first phase of Frontex’s African operation went into action. This saw Spanish experts being given help by colleagues from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Norway and France to identify exactly where migrants came from. A second and far more significant operation began in August and ended in December. This saw Spanish ships and aircraft being backed up by a Portuguese ship off the Cape Verde Islands, a Finnish surveillance plane and an Italian one based in Dakar.

According to Frontex, from August to December last year, 14,439 illegal migrants on 244 boats arrived in the Canary Islands but 3,665 were intercepted and turned back before they got there. But a detailed analysis of the figures shows an apparently increasing success rate. In three weeks in August 4,148 migrants got to the Canaries and 807 were stopped. In the first ten days of December though, 629 arrived while 393 were intercepted.

On 4 December José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, came to Dakar and promised €20 million in aid plus, according to the Senegalese press, 4,000 work visas.

But many are sceptical that much of this, or Frontex, will in the long run make a difference. "Migration," says Gilles Hervio, who heads the EU’s delegation in Dakar, "is a symptom of a much broader problem…people need hope. That is what is lacking."

This year, as for almost all of the last half century, the EU will play a major role in development assistance to Senegal, making contributions in several fields including infrastructure and good governance.

On 15 December Frontex ceased operations off the west African coast. But the Spanish continue to patrol and in the words of Frontex boss, Ilka Laitinen, "We are preparing the sequel." This could begin as early as 15 January when Italian sources believe that their Guardia di Finanza surveillance plane could be back in Dakar.

• Tim Judah is a freelance journalist based in London

Threading our way down to the beach, Magatie Diagne, aged 25, says that of the local football team "half are dead and the other half in Madrid". This is Thiaroye-sur-Mer, once a fishing village on the Senegalese coast, now a suburb of Dakar, the country’s capital. Diagne is a lucky man, because he is alive, but he does not see it that way. Here they say "Barcelona or Death" - and they mean it.