Why is the EU launching a doomed policy in stopping immigrant waves? What are the real targets?

Visit by Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission to the Middle East. Yesterday Mogherini met with Rami Hamdallah, Palestinian Prime Minister (on the right). (EC Audiovisual Services, 20/05/2015 Location: Ramallah – Residence of the Prime Minister).

For what it’s worth, the Libyan government, the one recognized by Europe and the West, rejected the EU plan to carry out military operations in the country’s territorial waters and soil against the traffickers of immigrants. This reaction by the one of the two Libyan governments is quite understandable, because it’s practically impossible to distinguish fishing boats from vessels that can be used by the networks of immigrant traffickers.

Naturally the recognized Libyan ‘government’ couldn’t oversee this fact and consequently rejected the European plans to ‘conquer’ the Cyrenaica for a second time, after the Romans destroyed Carthage in the 2nd Century BC. In any case no Libyan government can concede to the sinking of all fishing boats. The other Libyan ‘government’, the one based in the capital Tripoli, is not consulted by any European about anything nor did it react to something.

War against whom?

To be noted that the internationally recognized Libyan government and Parliament for security reasons are based aboard a chartered Greek merchant ship anchored off of the port of Tobruk, near the Egyptian border. It doesn’t have any real authority on the soil and is supported and recognized only by the West. Understandably it could be the only Libyan authority to accept whatever Europe could ask for, obviously at the exception of the destruction of all Libyan fishing boats.

There is another Libyan government in the capital Tripoli, but this one is not recognized by anybody and it is run by a cooperative of warlords and Islamist groups, who rule a good part of the Libyan soil. As for the rest of the Libyan territory, nobody can be certain about which one of the hundreds of armed factions rules which part of the country. It’s the definition of the complete political, economic and social chaos.

Conquering Libya

As everybody knows, the European Union and more precisely Britain, France and Italy cooperated with the US to annihilate the Libyan state. Now they want to use their naval and military might in order to place the country under a kind of international mandate. Last Monday 18 May, on the same day that the recognized Libyan government rejected the EU plans, Federica Mogherini High Representative and EU Commission Vice-President tweeted that the “Decision just taken to establish the EU naval operation to disrupt the business model of smugglers and traffickers networks in Mediterranean”.

Mogherini acts as if the recognized by Brussels Libyan government doesn’t exist. To sidestep the rejection of the EU plans by this ‘government’, Mogherini added that “I think that, following our decision today, it is more likely for the UN Security Council to take a resolution under Chapter 7. Obviously, as I stated many times before, we are looking for partnership with the Libyan authorities, with all the relevant Libyan authorities, and I think that this can also facilitate a resolution in the Security Council”. In short, the EU asks the UN to bless its plans to conquer Libya. In case though that the UN green light doesn’t come, the EU has clarified that the military operations will start with or without the blessing.

Repatriating the migrants

The EU foreign Affairs and Defense Ministers joint Council has set a concrete line of action for the EU to land its military forces in Libya, but first and foremost Brussels decided “that migrants, who have no right to stay on European soil, will be repatriated”. Commissioner Avramopoulos was adamant on that. He said, “we have to be firm on that”. Only 20.000 migrants will be accepted in the EU. In any case within the next two months (June and July) the EU plans to launch intelligence and subsequently military operations in the Libyan waters and soil. Ostensibly the target is to catch the smugglers and the traffickers of migrants.

Yet everybody knows that in connection with the local armed factions there are countless groups of traffickers which operate ad hoc and work amidst the thousands of perspective migrants, moving towards the Libyan ports. Then once on the Mediterranean shores every floating vessel can be used to transport migrants, once the right amount of dollars or euros is pooled. Actually it’s impossible to stop the flow of migrants by chasing the traffickers. It’s as if chasing phantoms.

Such bands will continue sprouting naturally as long as there is demand for similar services. In short the political, economic and social destruction of entire countries and regions like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Soudan, Somalia, Mali, Niger and other Sub-Saharan and Middle Eastern countries, will continue to generate migrant waves for as long as the living conditions of tens of millions of people remain unbearable.

It’s the oil stupid

It becomes obvious then that some core EU countries are using this issue to cover up their untold purpose to return and again officially set foot in Africa to control its oil flows. If Libya is sealed by the Europeans regarding the migrant flows, a rather impossible task given the length of the shores, it will be other Mediterranean countries like Turkey and Egypt to take up the lead. They will do it quite unwillingly because such numerous migrant waves will exert extra pressure on their structures.

Incidentally, Federica Mogherini, and Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement, Johannes Hahn, and the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Minister for EU Affairs Volkan Bozkır issued on 17 May a joint statement following a working dinner in Brussels. It contained the following passage, “We agreed to ask our services to prepare a plan to enhance our cooperation with a view to implementing the conclusions of the Special European Council on 23 April that called for a reinforced cooperation between the EU and Turkey on preventing illegal migration flows”.

However, the two EU Commissioners couldn’t convince their Turkish interlocutors to admit, that Turkey is obliged to take back the migrants who having set off from its territory have accessed an EU country. Turkey is an EU Candidate Country, but with the accession negotiations almost dead and two million Syrians and Iraqis refugees already stationed in the country, she is quite negative in accepting additional obligation in this chapter. Clearly the EU knows very well that Turkey is not at all cooperative in this issue. Ankara will try to get rid of as many migrants as possible, and even help them head for Europe.

Why a certain failure?

An easy conclusion, then, may be that the EU is rather certain that its strategy to stop the waves of perspective migrants will be a total failure, despite the destruction this strategy may bring to many. Even if some EU countries like Britain, France and Italy accompanied by the US occupy some Libyan ground, the migrant waves setting off from Libya itself and other South and East Mediterranean shores will be unstoppable. This leads us to the final conclusion that the West’s target is to officially set a foot in Africa, and this time it will with soldiers’ boots.
It also becomes evident why the EU and the US destroyed the Gaddafi regime, despite the fact that he had fully cooperated with them in every respect, even by interrogating or exterminating ‘terrorists’, handed over to him by the Americans.

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