Half a million migrants have already crossed the Mediterranean sea this year, with more than a million waiting for boats in Libya. More are pouring through Africa to join the exodus.
After months of dithering and inaction, the EU has at last launched its so-called military operation to counter the migrant smugglers but limits it to intelligence gathering. Yet, officials know intelligence, on its own, is worthless unless it leads to action.
EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, says real military action is on the table, with all kinds of plans for attacks on smuggler boats and even their Libyan bases under consideration. But she is vague on details and on timing. The surveillance will be both visual and electronic: naval ships from a dozen nations will watch smuggling boats, noting the ports they operate from. Meanwhile, planes and drones will eavesdrop on smuggler communications, trying to pinpoint the individuals who run this lethal trade and their funders inside Europe.
Many of the migrants pay for passage - at prices starting at $1,000 - with money transferred from Europe, it being too dangerous to bring such large sums with them on their trek through the desert to the Libyan coast. Tracking also this funding in Europe will be one key to success.
Intelligence, on its own, is worthless unless it leads to action
But intelligence on its own won’t win the battle and that’s where things get sticky. For the moment, EU naval craft are prohibited from encroaching Libyan waters without permission and so unable to do more than watch as smugglers load more and more craft with migrants.
In fact, the EU navies are now acting as a ‘ferry service’ for the smugglers who joke they no longer need to use seaworthy craft because naval ships are waiting offshore to pick up their cargos. They’re right: it is a joke.
To actually stop the trade means much tougher action and for this the EU lacks both the will and the authority.
The UN Security Council has already refused to authorise military action against migrant craft, with Russia and China blocking the vote. And the EU is not likely to get Libya’s permission.
Libya Dawn, the Islamist militia alliance which controls Tripoli and the two key smuggling embarkation points, has threatened to oppose any military incursion. So too has the recognised government, which is based in the eastern city of Tobruk. Tobruk is far from the smuggling beaches and its air force has warned that any “unauthorised vessel” entering Libyan waters may be subject to air strikes.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon suggests that the EU simply wait until his envoy in Libya, Bernardino Leon, cements a peace deal to end Libya’s civil war with a unity government. But Leon’s plan for a unity government is in tatters, after nine months of ham-fisted diplomacy in which he has managed to antagonise all parties.
Despite his most recent efforts in Misurata and Skhirat, Morocco to again try and force upon the Libyan people a unity government that encompasses terrorists and the dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood, someone should tell Leon, as well as the British and American governments, that it will never happen.
In fact, the migration problem is making peace harder because migrants are now a major source of income for Tripoli’s Libya Dawn militias, some, no doubt, in cahoots with IS. With profits of $300,000 per boat, these extremists have no interest in agreeing to allow the rule of law into their territory.
Nor will the EU’s push to have member states take in quotas ease the problem. Figures of 100,000 up to one million are bandied about but Brussels has no answer for what happens next. With the quota full, will new waves of migrants be deterred or will it only speed up the flow?
The bottom line is this. The West must break the ‘capillary action’ whereby the increasing numbers of migrants that successfully make it to Europe only endorse the business model and draw yet further migrants into the pipelines to the North. This can be achieved in two ways.
The first option is by interdicting migrants and sending them either back to Libya - difficult but not impossible whether legally or logistically - or to way-centres in a mutually-agreed third country for onward processing back home, such as Niger.
The second option is to more tangibly back Libya’s democratically-elected Parliament and legitimate government with credible and meaningful support to help re-energise the army that includes Khalifa Haftar.
With the integration of reconcilable militias, particularly from Misurata, the co-opting of border tribes cut loose from central authority since the events of 2011 and with the concerted deconstruction (with Nato’s help) of those other Islamist and recalcitrant actors, Libya will once again be able to manage its borders and police the illegal migration business before it even sees the coast of the Mediterranean.
The first options are the cheaper, shorter term ones; the second option is the key to longer term stability across North Africa and the Sahel.
Richard Galustian is a security analyst.