Up
to 1 Million Libyan Refugees Waiting to Board Ship for Europe
And Jihadi groups are doing their best to encourage the
exodus.
By Richard Fernandez in PJ Media and
the Belmont Club blog
Survivors of the smuggler’s boat
that overturned off the coast of Libya rest on the deck of an Italian Coast
Guard ship in Valletta’s Grand Harbour. The UN estimates more than 800 people
were believed to have drowned in the weekend sinking of a boat packed with
migrants trying to reach Europe, making it the deadliest such disaster in the
Mediterranean. (AP Photo/Lino Azzopardi, File)
According to EU’s border chief, up to one million refugees are waiting on the Libyan beach
to board ship for Europe. “Up to one million migrants could reach Europe from
Libya amid collapsing security in the northern African country, the European
Union’s border agency chief has warned.”
Frontex executive director Fabrice
Leggeri said he expects asylum seekers’ crossings to skyrocket in 2015 and
urged EU governments to ready themselves to “face a way more difficult
situation than last year”.
“We are told there are between
500,000 and one million migrants ready to leave from Libya,” Leggeri told
Italian news agency Ansa. “We have to be aware of the risks”.
One of the more interesting aspects
of this flood of human misery is that it is not entirely spontaneous. Jihadi
groups are doing their best to encourage it.
With the country now locked in a
three-way power-struggle pitting government troops against different Islamist
groups including Islamic State (Isis) affiliates, fears have been raised that
extremists could mingle with the hundreds of migrants crossing by boat every
week or drastically increase the number of crossings to strain EU border
forces.
“We have evidence that migrants have
been forcibly boarded on vessels at gunpoint,” Leggeri said. “I do not have
elements to say they were terrorists but there are worries among states.”
That would not be surprising. In 2004 Europe agreed to pay Muhammar Gaddafi four billion pounds a
year in exchange for a promise to halt people smuggling to Europe.
Experts have also drawn links
between the massive rise in would-be migrants and a so-called ‘deal in the
desert’ struck by Tony Blair in 2004 – which saw the late Muammar Gaddafi agree
to crack down on human traffickers as well as renouncing Libya’s possession of
WMDs and decommissioning the country’s chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
In 2008 Gaddafi sought to stiff the
European Union for £4.1 billion a year in return for halting the flows of
migrants in and out of Libya. …
As Blair’s much touted ‘deal in the
desert’ turned sour, Gaddafi gave people smugglers in Zuwara the green light to
resume their trade and the migrant routes have flourished ever since.
The people-smuggling networks once
controlled by the Duck of Death have almost certainly been taken over by the
Jihadis, who have turned them to their own purposes. This view is not yet
widely shared. The general perception is that the refugee flood is a
“humanitarian crisis.” The Washington Post, for example, exhorts the Europeans
to take more migrants to solve the problem. “Europe needs to take a lead role
in solving the African migrant crisis.”
Only the European Union can help
these migrants, especially once they take to the sea. Shamefully, however,
governments under pressure from domestic anti-immigrant parties have shrunk
from the task. Last year Italy undertook its own, much-praised operation to
rescue people from boats, saving many; but it was scaled back in October after
other governments declined to join in and some complained, wrongheadedly, that
the effort itself might be attracting migrants. In recent months a much smaller
E.U. search-and-rescue mission has been limited to Italy’s territorial waters,
making it far more likely that sinkings and other accidents will lead to mass
deaths.
Thankfully, the weekend disaster
appears to have galvanized — or maybe shamed — E.U. governments, who agreed to
hold a summit meeting Thursday to consider solutions. The starting point should
be obvious: the resumption of a large-scale search-and-rescue operation like
that abandoned by Italy. But European leaders should also consider providing
more legal ways for African refugees to seek refuge in their countries, without
having to board smuggling boats; and they should consider more forceful steps
to combat the smugglers and to help restore order in Libya. What shouldn’t be
an option is continuing to ignore the humanitarian crisis spilling into the
Mediterranean.
While the refugee flood is most
certainly a humanitarian tragedy, it is very probably a deliberate component of
the rapid advance of Islamist forces through North Africa, Arabia and the
Levant. The probable reason why the establishment can’t see this is
because they’ve willed themselves not to see the war. The constant
mantra is that there is no war on terror; that the enemy is nothing
to do with Islam. See the war and you can see the tactic. In fact,
it is reminiscent of the old Nazi 1940 method of driving refugees onto the roads before them to tie up the French while the Panzers advanced behind them.
France’s vaunted Maginot Line failed
to hold back the Nazi onslaught and the German Blitzkrieg poured into France.
(see Blizkrieg, 1940) Thousands of civilians fled before it. Traveling south in
cars, wagons, bicycles or simply on foot, the desperate refugees took with them
what few possessions they could salvage. It wasn’t long before the roads were
impassable to the French troops who were headed north in an attempt to reach
the battlefield. …
Its aim was to create panic amongst
the civilian population. A civil population on the move can be absolute havoc
for a defending army trying to get its forces to the war front. With so much
focus placed on the frontline, if this could be penetrated then the ensuing
doubt, confusion and rumour were sure to paralyse both the government and the
defending military.
This was very effective and France
fell in 40 days. The 2015 boat people tide is the equivalent of the 1940 stream
of refugees. That Blitzkrieg kind of comparison may be unfamiliar ancient history
to today’s leaders. But they may still be familiar with the more current term of
ethnic cleansing, which is really an updated term
for an older concept, the displaced person (DP). One of the interesting characteristics of the
recent wars in Islamic regions is how many DPs they’ve
generated.
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