Libya is slipping fast into chaos and, like Syria, is drawing in outside jihadist extremists. It is posing a threat to the West. Libya has two rival governments, two parliaments, two sets of competing claims to run the central bank and national oil companies, no functioning national army or police force and an assortment of militias that terrorise the country’s benighted citizens.
They plunder what remains of the country’s wealth. They destroy what is left of Libya’s infrastructure and torture, maim and kill wherever they are in the ascendancy.
Libya is a failed state. Its poison is seeping out across other parts of Africa, from Mali in the west and as far as Egypt’s Sinai desert in the east. Arab tribes and other ethnic groups are pledging allegiance to Al-Qaeda and the murderous Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
ISIS is a gangster network of terrorist extremists. It has learnt the shock value of horrifying acts of violence as seen in France and Denmark. It is now established in Derna in Libya. Its attack against the Maltese-owned Corinthia Hotel last month in Tripoli was an eye-catching way to announce its arrival in Libya.
It was followed by the brutal beheading of 21 Coptic Christians, and this led Egypt, enraged by the murder of its citizens, to mount an immediate military response in cooperation with the (Western-recognised) government of Libya in Tobruk.
With its vast ungoverned spaces and some 6,000 kilometres of border, Libya’s problems are difficult to contain. Each month thousands of migrants set sail for Europe. The threat to the West is now manifest at many levels from mass migration to terrorism.
I shall not trespass on the excellent political commentaries about what is going on in Libya by my friends Ranier Fsadni and Richard Galustian. But I should like to look at the issue from the very narrow perspective of Malta since geographic proximity to Libya seems to engender considerable feelings of vulnerability, panic, latent xenophobia – as well as grandiose feelings that “Malta must do something about it”. Cyprus, which is the same distance from the raging cauldron of Syria as Malta is to Libya, seems to adopt a more muted tone.
Beginning with the diplomatic campaign against ISIS which Malta signally failed to join in September 2014. The so-called coalition against ISIS which met in Paris to declare its backing for the Iraqi government’s bid to recapture all ISIS-controlled areas “by any means necessary, including appropriate military assistance” did not include Malta. Malta’s Foreign Minister said that this was because of the neutrality clause in our Constitution.
Yet the coalition included every other EU country, including the neutral countries of Austria, Sweden, Finland and Ireland. Were they reneging on their constitutional obligations? The answer is no, since the international coalition against ISIS agreed to a range of options – not simply military intervention but also humanitarian aid and financial measures.
Other European neutral countries felt they could join the coalition and rightly judged their national interests required it.
It was remiss of Malta not to sign up to the coalition last year. Does it matter?
Clearly, Malta’s contribution in humanitarian terms would necessarily be small. But in diplomatic terms it was a grave error, especially given the way the ISIS threat is developing in the Middle East, and directly next door in Libya. Our national self-interest was patently affected.
Moreover, our involvement in the refugee crisis as a result of the chaos in Libya should also have caused the government to be less blinkered in its approach – even if neutrality were affected, which it clearly wasn’t.
What we cannot do is hypocritically call on others to use force in Libya when we ourselves are not prepared to put Maltese bodies on the line
Being neutral does not mean remaining passive in the face of the gangster terrorism which ISIS represents. While under our Constitution neutrality means “refusing to participate in any military alliance”, it does not imply turning a blind eye to a threat in our backyard, or ignoring the barbaric acts of terrorism, brutality and mayhem being committed by ISIS in its doomed attempts to recreate the imperial sweep of medieval Islam.
The government’s failure to recognise their wider duties as part of the EU in supporting the West’s drive against Islamic extremism by joining the coalition was an error of judgement which the Prime Minister has promised to rectify.
The government might have done better to take a leaf out of Lawrence Gonzi’s book in offering international humanitarian and logistic support during the crisis that toppled Gaddafi four years ago, instead of abjectly hiding behind a very tightly drawn and now outdated neutrality clause in the Constitution.
There can be no doubt that Article 1(3) of the Constitution on neutrality and non-alignment, as currently worded, is anachronistic. But until the Constitution is amended we remain a neutral country within the European Union, supporting the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.
How then should we behave in a way befitting a neutral state of no military clout? Shouting loudly from the sidelines is not the answer. I have not heard Austria, Sweden, Ireland or Finland publicly advocating military intervention in Libya or, even more unrealistically, action by the European Union (as the Leader of the Opposition, not to be outdone by the Prime Minister, was advocating).
Pressure for the Security Council to despatch a UN peace-keeping force – even if this were a viable solution – will have to compete for priority with the Ukraine.
It is absolutely correct to argue that the threats Malta faces have nothing to do with neutrality and everything to do with countering terrorism. The West is facing threats – individual acts of lone-wolf murders as in Paris and Copenhagen – from disaffected jihadist fighters from ISIS and any number of other Islamist terrorist groups. Malta is vulnerable to the same threats.
But the reality is that Malta does not face an imminent or existential threat from ISIS hordes taking to their boats or aircraft from Libya to invade Malta. That is the stuff of fevered imaginations, promoted by skilful media manipulation by ISIS “professionals of terror”. We are being subjected to a battle of minds waged by a stateless caliphate whose currency is the indiscriminate beheading of Westerners to demoralise us or cause panic. With considerable success in Malta, it appears.
As a neutral country it is beholden on us to work diplomatically towards a solution by the Libyans themselves. The only way ISIS can be defeated is by building genuine international and regional partnerships with Muslim countries which, as Egypt has realised, stand to lose if they fail to suppress the evil cancer in their midst. In Libya it can only be achieved by the rival factions in Tripoli and Tobruk coming together to work towards a unity government.
As to Malta, a far better policy for the Prime Minister to adopt is to work quietly behind the scenes and to play to our strengths. We can offer humanitarian or logistic support.
Moreover, despite our size – or perhaps because of it – we can offer diplomatic links with Libya as interlocutors between the two sides. What we cannot do is hypocritically call on others to use force in Libya when we ourselves are not prepared to put Maltese bodies on the line.