Today we dive into hybrid warfare (again) but first a calibration that everyone now agrees that Ceuta was a state-coordinated hybrid attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/my-europe\/2026\/08\/02\/spanish-government-received-intelligence-warnings-of-ceuta-migrant-surge-days-before-crisi<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are videos of buses full of people driving up to the border and unconfirmed reports that personnel from the Moroccan security services were among the crowd, in addition to Morocco completely opening its own border control and then assaulting those who tried to return to Morocco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After that, opinions diverge like Moses and the Red Sea, roughly, which is why there is value in continuing to discuss this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last time Ceuta was visited was apparently in 2021 when Spain and Morocco were in discussions that went half well and 8,000 people crossed the border into Ceuta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This time it was possibly because Spain\u2019s Sanchez visited Algeria, which made the Moroccans a bit upset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/africa\/20260720-spain-pm-sanchez-visits-algeria-first-time-four-years-ties-thaw<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Others suggest it was because the Spanish Supreme Court decided that if people arrive by sea, they cannot automatically be sent back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2026\/08\/01\/europe\/spain-morocco-migrants-intl<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Spain decided in 2026 to issue an amnesty for undocumented migrants, which eventually reached around one million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/europe\/20260630-spain-more-than-one-million-undocumented-migrants-apply-for-amnesty-scheme<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not far-fetched to guess that people were told that if they enter by sea, which in this case means going around a breakwater, and come up on the beach in Ceuta, they are automatically entitled to the amnesty (which is already over). A story is concocted on social media that gives people false hope and manages to get 60,000 to cross the border into Ceuta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now I circle back to my earlier posts about the summer of 2026, which were written last winter and spring, where we guessed that this year would be the mother of all hybrid wars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We went through that the entire perimeter defense against the Mediterranean in 2026 is basically intact, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Italy, France, and Portugal have all taken the position that people who enter illegally are sent back promptly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trafficking will always exist, but large state-supported campaigns are no longer possible in these countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only country that has not adopted this new line is Spain, apart from actually the UK and Ireland, which are not on the perimeter defense in the same way as these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Up north, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have completely closed their borders now and attempts at hybrid warfare through trafficking from Belarus and Russia have completely died out. Probably the players have simply gotten tired of sitting and freezing at the border without further prospects of moving on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is therefore not insignificant at all that it is precisely Spain that has been targeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a government, you have a great deal of responsibility and one of them is to protect your citizens and do what is best for the people in the country besides managing your relations with your friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Has Spain colonized Ceuta and Melilla and should they be returned \u2013 a question to ponder perhaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today’s Morocco was part of the empire that conquered the Iberian Peninsula for centuries before they were expelled, and thereafter the Spaniards took Ceuta from the Portuguese. In the 1500s, they were declared Spanish territories with today\u2019s autonomous status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Spaniards should keep completely quiet about Gibraltar and not complain so loudly about other countries\u2019 land grabs because they themselves have a piece of land they have kept outside their own territory simply because they can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or should they do what they demand of others and return Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ceuta has around 90,000 inhabitants, of whom a not insignificant part are of Moroccan origin. The incident itself involved over 60,000 who entered in a short time from Morocco and then most left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If this had been an attempted invasion, it probably would have succeeded, so the Spanish government has absolutely not taken its task seriously here. Before the incident, there were 170 police officers and 2,000-3,000 soldiers in the enclave. They were completely unable to solve their task and had to call for reinforcements from Spain because they were overrun and the citizens had to lock themselves in for a few days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the stories differ \u2013 I now follow some residents in Ceuta and they are of the very strong opinion that about 15,000 still remain in the area despite military presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There have been some murders (not those who died trying to get in) and extensive looting with accompanying arson. If where I live I am forced to lock myself in because there are riots, I expect the state to solve it \u2013 is that wrong thinking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some videos now circulating suggest that those who stayed are a bit more prone to rioting than those who chose to leave \u2013 but now the influence operations are in full swing and all kinds of videos are being spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Spanish government has chosen to downplay the event which has instead led to domestic political disputes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of Europe, which was not supportive of the earlier amnesty, immediately went hard and demanded border control; if Spain could not manage it, they would impose it on Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what is the problem besides that the residents of Ceuta had to stay home without Friday night relaxation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, that the Spanish government, by not understanding that these are difficult times, makes it easy for others to wage hybrid war against them, and in the long run risks a government crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spain is already today a weak government supported by the far right and far left \u2013 both flanks are influenced by Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spain is also the country after Canada with the largest military presence in the Baltics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Spanish government has strongly criticized the USA in the Iran war and is clear with Israel about what they think of Israel\u2019s colonization of Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right or wrong, one can at least conclude that Spain does not lack enemies, and if you have enemies you should at least ensure that you can manage your own self-defense, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poland, Finland, and the Baltics have had exactly the same problems and are light years more exposed to hybrid warfare than Spain is \u2013 they solved their incidents quite harshly and today have full control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We will return to the forest fires but they are naturally also part of hybrid warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2015 was what is today called the migration crisis, the USA had long been at war in the Middle East and large refugee flows had then gone towards Turkey, Lebanon, and other countries further west because it was virtually impossible to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A bit like Angola had it, I learned when I went there for work in 2006, first the army came and looted, raped, and murdered, the next week the rebels came and looted, raped, and murdered \u2013 for the civilian population the only constant was rape, murder, and looting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Russia came and was even worse, so the refugee flows became even larger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russia\u2019s early presence in Africa was around that time and China had been there for a long time. Russia\u2019s Wagner is today in a large number of countries in Africa and they desecrate, loot, and torture their way through wherever they always side with the worst party.<\/p>\n\n\n Europe had a couple of years where we all understood our previous debt on the continent, but it has also led to us having an acute aversion to reestablishing ourselves there. The USA was simply kicked out of a couple of countries along with France not so long ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only country that is really there now trying to do good is Ukraine, which sends capabilities to every country where Russia is present to decimate wherever they can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You don’t read much about Africa anymore, but Russia is absolutely the worst that continent has had to deal with in a long time. Previously fragile democracies that were slowly starting to function got the full brunt of Russian subversive activities and collapsed into civil wars or dictatorships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mozambique, which was the country that always worked, has today been on the brink of civil war \u2013 to me, it is incomprehensible. I worked with a Portuguese man born in Mozambique when I was in Nigeria 2023 \u2013 2024 and we discussed this all the time since his family and relatives lived in the area that was worst affected. The family left for Portugal but the parents wanted to stay. Fun anecdote, but when he was little they were poor farmers, so he ran two miles to school in shorts without a T-shirt and cooked his food over an open fire at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2015, Turkey carried out a large transport of people from Syria and Afghanistan into Europe, and many also crossed the Mediterranean from the African continent \u2013 it was probably a couple of million in total after a few years, where countries like Italy, Greece, and others chose to bus them further up into Europe as their capacity to handle the situation was completely overwhelmed by the numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2016, the UK voted for its Brexit, where Nigel Farage, who we now know took Russian money, promised that all migration problems would be solved on the day if the vote was yes. Lucky for him that there was a migration crisis at the same time, one must conclude in hindsight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the rest of Europe, anti-migration parties like the National Front (or whatever they are called today) in France and AfD in Germany have now become so strong that they are on the verge of winning elections \u2013 and they have strong ties to Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, you can either do like Spain and not see that state actors are behind and seize opportunities in flight that they themselves have created over time, or you accept that Europe as a continent is exposed to a low-intensity hybrid war by probably everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Basically, no one wants a strong Europe because everyone knows what happens then. We made China into addicts, the British had the empire where the sun never set which they could plunder around the clock, and if we weren’t busy colonizing others, we fought among ourselves \u2013 history is just war, war, war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is in everyone else’s DNA to keep an eye on us, and since the Cold War ended when we were scared, divided, and weak, we have now formed ourselves into the fairly large block EU and are to “arm ourselves to the teeth.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Europe is thinking completely right \u2013 we shall grow through trade and make friends, not through the game of who has the most fire tubes wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem is just that no one else cares, and we have now reached the level of hybrid war in Europe, which we so far handle really poorly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The forest fires in Europe are the next part of this year’s folk festival, took a really long time but now the media is slowly beginning to admit that they are arson. There are always domestic political points to be scored on everything, and since it did not fit anyone’s power ambitions, it was overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n France has arrested 375 people for setting forest fires now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n