On Monday morning in Brussels, the European Union’s foreign and defence ministers met amid fanfare to announce decisive military action to tackle the migrant crisis. But that action will not happen until July. And even then only if the UN agrees, which it probably will not. It was, in fact, one more example of Western powers burying their heads in the sand and disguising words as action.
Meanwhile, a very different meeting got under way several thousand miles away, in Cairo, where Arab states debated military intervention in Libya to choke off a rapidly growing Islamic State before it is too late.
Unlike the waffle in Brussels, the Arab leaders were deadly serious: IS on the march in Libya, supported by extremists in the country’s ‘anti-government’ in Tripoli, which has expelled the democratic authorities.
The Egyptian-led move would be in response to a request from Libya’s legitimate government, now based in the east of the country. If permission is granted, the coalition would advance probably as far as Sirte, the main base for IS, taking out IS units in Derna and Benghazi along the way.
Nobody in the West wants to say it, but the anti-government in Tripoli is behind the two problems that make Libya such a problem for the region: IS and migration. Some of Libya Dawn’s militias funnel weapons and men to IS in the east of the country while also controlling the west Libya beaches where migrants leave for Europe.
A purely Arab coalition led by Egyptian forces moving into Libya is an extreme solution but, at the moment, the only real one on the table
Regional Arab states meeting in Cairo have lost patience with the UN’s attempts to broker a peace deal in Libya, after eight months of getting nowhere, and the EU’s promises of action that bring only fresh delays.
Instead, they are already talking about a coalition to save Libya, modelled on the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, launched in March.
While the EU may be happy to wait a month or three before taking any kind of action in Libya, Egypt cannot wait. Memories are fresh of the slaughter of Egyptian copts on a beach in Sirte by IS last February and weapons from Libyan extremists continue to find their way into the hands of Egyptian extremists in Sinai.
In Tripoli, Libya Dawn sees the migration problem as a great opportunity to score points with the West. It is an old and well-tried tactic evolved over centuries: you start a fire – in this case, mass migration – then you cast yourselves as hero firefighters by putting it out. This may fool the West but does not fool regional powers.
Egypt will have a chance to hear the views of key Libyan leaders when it hosts a Cairo meeting for Libyan tribes later in the month in conjunction with the United Nations.
This meeting, organised by Justice First, is the brainchild of Libyan billionaire businessman Hassan Tatanki, aiming to gather a wide spectrum of Libyan tribes and to promote unity against the extremists in Libya.
Meanwhile, the Western powers sit on their hands. Libya’s army has been battling extremists in Benghazi for a year and civil war has been ongoing since last July, bringing the country ever closer to disintegration.
The elephant in the room is the West’s refusal to see that, under this strain, the House of Representatives, Libya’s legitimate, UN-recognised Parliament, and the government of Abdullah al-Thinni may be close to collapse leaving Khalifa Haftar and an Arab coalition a military solution in Libya as the only option.
The Brussels announcement on combating migrants stated with such conviction, and promising so little, is no more than wind and bluster, a cowardly refusal to accept that Libya’s crisis demands hard solutions.
The UN and certainly not Russia, who would exercise their veto, will never give the green light for attacks on Libyan ports and, with smugglers now using easy-to-replace rubber boats imported from Europe, bombing the migrant craft will solve nothing.
However, a purely Arab coalition led by Egyptian forces moving into Libya is an extreme solution yet, at the moment, the only real one on the table.
If it works, clearing out the extremists and the militias who get rich through people-smuggling, it will be applauded by Greece, Italy and Malta, which are on Europe’s front line of the migrant wave.
Richard Galustian is a security analyst.