Malta could end up in the path of fleeing Syrian refugees making the more dangerous sea crossing to Europe from Egypt, according to an independent analyst.

With migratory routes in Turkey closing off, Syrian refugees are more likely to shift to Egypt rather than Libya, Mark Micallef, executive director of Migrant Report said.

This could create a more active smuggling route in the eastern Mediterranean. With Malta’s search and rescue zone extending almost all the way to Crete, the island may be called in more often to coordinate rescue operations in the area, Mr Micallef said.

Migrant Report is a non-profit organisation that documents migration. It is currently carrying out research on migratory flows and human smuggling networks in Libya, Turkey and Myanmar.

Mr Micallef said the crossings from Egypt are likely to lead to bigger tragedies, as happened last week when 460 migrants are believed to have died when their boat capsized.

We can expect boat departures to pick up and possibly peak in the coming months

“The smuggling networks in Egypt are using big boats, which will render the scale of any tragedy much bigger and to make things worse there are fewer naval vessels in the eastern Mediterranean to carry out rescue operations,” he said.

He noted the latest tragedy saw the boat leave from Alexandria in Egypt with a stopover in Tobruk on Libya’s far eastern coast to pick up more migrants.

“This indicates a very coordinated cross-border approach by smugglers,” he said.

Malta has witnessed almost no arrivals from Libya by boat over the past three years as Italy took in all rescued migrants.

The situation has prompted speculation of an oil-for-migrants deal between Italy and Malta but Mr Micallef pointed to another factor: migrants being rescued further down south closer to Libya.

“While I cannot exclude there may be a political arrangement between Malta and Italy, the truth is that migrant boats started being intercepted by the Italian navy as part of the Mare Nostrum mission just off Libya’s territorial waters before even entering Malta’s search and rescue area. The same is happening now with the EU mission, codenamed Sophia, which operates just outside Libyan waters.”

Mr Micallef said migration from Libya had slowed down since September but attributed this to a chain of events within Libya that curtailed the activities of smuggler networks rather than the result of operation Sophia.

There was a mass tragedy last August off the coast of Zuwara, a major smuggling port, which shocked locals and led to vigilante groups curbing down on the people traffickers, he explained.

There was also fighting between militia groups and Islamic State operatives in Sabratha after the US bombed a suspected Isis outpost there. The ensuing instability made it difficult for the people smugglers to work there, Mr Micallef said.

However, this did not mean that migration from sub-Sahara Africa into Libya had stopped.

“From our contacts on the ground we have no indication that migration flows into Libya are drastically reduced and we can expect boat departures to pick up and possibly peak in the coming months,” Mr Micallef said.

He was reluctant to quantify the phenomenon, insisting it was a characteristic of the central Mediterranean migration route to operate in a haphazard manner.

kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com