Rescue boats alone are not enough
With the exception of a few professional trolls, there has been near-universal shock and sadness at the recent tragedies in the Mediterranean. Up to 1,500 migrants are believed to have drowned this year alone; the latest sinking, claiming the lives of almost 700, is thought to be the largest loss of life during a migrant crossing in Europe.
What makes it worse is the knowledge that European governments, including our own, are acquiescing in the tragedy. At the end of last year Europe stopped its search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean amid complaints from some EU member states that they were unaffordable. Meanwhile our own Foreign Office disingenuously argued that the prospect of being rescued from the sea was acting as “an unintended ‘pull factor’, encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths”.
The argument was a familiar one; how often do we hear it said by the current government that the UK benefit system provides a similar ‘pull factor’ to migrants?
This line of reasoning, if you can call it that, has now been exposed for what it is: callous nonsense. It is nonsense because the real and overriding ‘pull factor’ is the relative safety of Europe when contrasted with brutal and war-ravaged Libya. For thousands of people, the prospect of staying in Libya is viewed as a greater risk than taking to the seas in a ramshackle and overcrowded boat. The latter offers a chance, however slim, of eventual sanctuary in Europe.
Libya is the starting point for around 90 per cent of the migrants reaching Italy by sea, according to the Italian government. The reasons for this are clear: violent militias dominate large swathes of the country and ISIS controls parts of the north and east.
The fashionable view is that this is the fault of the west for aiding the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi back in 2011. As with Iraq, if only the west hadn’t meddled the picture in Libya might not be quite so grim – or so the argument goes.
Apart from being a shot in the dark, this is a monumental re-writing of history. Back in 2011, a UN resolution authorised “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians after Gaddafi’s forces began a brutal assault on rebel-held Benghazi. As the dictator’s forces closed in on the city, 200,000 people fled the fighting and hundreds of cars full of people were seen heading for the Egyptian border.
Western nations may well have sat on their hands and given Gaddafi’s army a free-reign in Benghazi. They had done a similar thing in the past in Rwanda and Bosnia. The mistake is to believe that this option, if you can call it that, would have left Libya peaceful and secure. Take a look at Syria (200,000 dead and counting) if you find yourself tempted by the idea that allowing a dictator to re-assert power against a nascent rebellion does not have a bloody cost. Had Gaddafi remained in the saddle, hundreds perhaps thousands of Libyans would have been killed – with thousands more likely to have fled the country.
The real disgrace in Libya was not intervention, which was based on a duty to protect civilians; it was the abandonment of the nascent post-Gaddafi government in Libya to chaos. As Perry Abdulkadir put it on these pages last year:
After Gaddafi was killed in late October 2011, the interim Libyan government asked NATO to extend its mission until the end of the year. When the UN Security Council withdrew support of a continued mission, though, NATO took it as an excuse to rid itself of responsibility in Libya.
Libya collapsed into chaos because the state lost its monopoly on force. The west, which had helped to overthrow Gaddafi, did little to assist the state as it tried to reassert its authority. As a result the power vacuum in the country was filled by hundreds of militias and – worst of all – the sadists of ISIS. In this context, the fact that thousands of people wish to leave Libya by any available means ought not to come as a surprise.
And so preventing further tragedies in Europe’s seas requires a two-pronged approach: restarting the rescues, yes; but restarting the nation-building in Libya, too. Ultimately that means helping the Libyan government to disarm ISIS and other violent militias.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
105 Responses to “Mediterranean migrant deaths: restart the rescue, but restart nation-building in Libya too”
damon
I keep posting on these things because they are being discussed on these blogs.
And the stories are in the news.
If we are to give the go-ahead for a regulated asylum and immigration route into western Europe, millions will head this way. Even as it stands, British embassies are very busy all over Africa and Asia with people trying to get visas to come here.
I come from Croydon and I’ve seen the queues at the Home Office building.
The bookies in West Croydon is always busy with those kind of ”Calais migrants” who live in bedsits and flats there.
And read this about young asylum seekers lying about their ages.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2795475/teachers-claim-male-asylum-seekers-20s-ending-schools-lying-age-stay-uk.html
Guest
Keep making up your myths.
And you are looking at the queues to get OUT, right.
Then you link the Daily Fail, not statistics. Right.
damon
Where do you live btw Leon? Or where do you know well?
Do you actually know what the ‘first port of call immigration hot spots’ are actually like? The kinds of places the people who get over from Calais go directly to on arrival in England. They will have a whole load of information about what is potentially available where, as they’ve had months to discuss these things in detail.
Have you never been in the internet cafes where some of these people like to hang out? They are almost in daily contact with friends and family back home, or people on their journey to the west. There was one in Vienna that I was going into a lot when I was there for a while a couple of years ago. It was run by Afghans or some nearby region and nearly all the young men who used to frequent it were from that region too. Open 24 hours a day, I even saw some guys sleeping on the floor there overnight. Filled with smoke, and playing shoot ’em up games mostly, plus a bit of football, and skips conversations with their families back home. And occasionally, a bit of a scuffle and almost a fight breaking out. The ones I’ve been to in London haven’t been so raucous, but I’m just explaining how clued up these young men are when they arrive. If they don’t come from a place of danger, they can lie about where exactly they’re from. If it’s known that if you are under 18 or 21 then councils will have a duty of care for you and put you up in hostels and help you go to school or college, then if you are a year or two over that age, it would be tempting to knockma couple of years off your age.
Leon, there’s plenty about this online. Just google the words ”underage asylum seekers UK”.
Actually here’s a link to a google search:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=underage+asylum+seekers+uk&oq=underage+asylum+seekers+uk&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.9200j0j4&client=tablet-android-pega&sourceid=chrome-mobile&espvd=1&ie=UTF-8&gws_rd=ssl&safe=strict
Guest
Oh right, you’d stop information about the UK being discussed, somehow, right. As you attack internet cafes for “some of those people” being allowed. How dare people talk to their friends and families!
And ah yes, that social centre in Vienna, which was heavily used because of cuts to housing services for refugees…right. And you caused fights? My my.
You’re “explaining” your policies of discrimination, how dare people KNOW these things! As you make claims without backing – thinking random google searches prove anything but the fact you can type a few words and copy/paste a link.
damon
As this website is trolled out by you, and you won’t stop ….. what the heck!!
It would be better if we had a troll that was actually a bit amusing now and again.
I just described how these young asylum seekers, in both Vienna and London are very well clued up on how to get by in their new countries, and they pass the information back down the chain to their friends who are on the way.
Guys now stuck in Calais have addresses in their notebooks and Facebook accounts for where to head to if they manage to get over. And it will start off by sleeping on a friends floor in a flat above the kebab shops in a place like West Croydon or Walthamstow.
I don’t why you have to always insist I’m attacking people when I’m just describing what I see and what I think is going on. You said I was lying about young single asylum seekers lying about their age, and I show you a whole load of results from a google search that show I’m right. If councils have a duty of care to young asylum seekers under a certain age, why wouldn’t someone who was just over that age, and had no documents to prove his age, lie to people from the council?
It could mean the difference between getting put into a home for young vulnerable people and helped by a care worker, and being put in detention centre or being told to leave the country. You’re just in denial Leon.