04 21, 2015.
How the fall of Qaddafi gave rise to Europe's migrant crisis?. Libya's coast has a long history of sending people – willing and unwilling – to Europe and the Americas. Ports like Tripoli and Benghazi were the final stops for medieval slave-trading caravans from the African interior until the 19th century. In recent decades, migrants have shoved off for Italy and Spain in rickety fishing boats, with Libyan officials looking the other way. Mr. Qaddafi was well aware of European alarm at the rising tide of migrants in his final years in power. He used it as a powerful wedge to improve his own standing. Back to 2004, Qaddafi began making deals with individual European states to control the tide of migrants. In August 2010, he visited his friend Berlusconi, then president of Italy, in Rome and said Europe would turn "black" without his help. "Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European, and even black, as there are millions who want to come in" - Qaddafi said. "What will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans ... we don't know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions." Qaddafi had a handy solution. He offered to shut down his country and its coastal waters to the job seekers in exchange for €5 billion a year. He pointed to his work with Italy as proof he could get the job done. In June 2009, he signed a "friendship" agreement with Italy that involved joint naval patrols against migrants and Italy handing over migrants captured en route to Europe to Libya, no questions asked. The number of Africans caught trying to illegally enter Italy fell by more than 75 percent that year. By the end of the year Qaddafi had struck a more modest €50 million deal. Internment camps were built and watchtowers erected on the beaches. There was little concern with how Qaddafi went about his business and there were frequent reports of rape and theft by Libyan security services. When the uprising against Qaddafi began in early 2011, the situation only grew worse for the African migrants. Many rebel groups were convinced that any foreign African in the country were mercenaries for Qaddafi and hundreds were executed. The European Union grapples with the morality of cutting back on patrols to rescue migrants. The argument for doing less is that increasing the risk of crossing the Mediterranean would save lives. Word that there was no safety net would filter back to people, many of them fleeing persecution, and they'd stop coming. "We do not support planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean,” British Foreign Office Minister Anelay said last year. Rescues have “an unintended ‘pull factor,' encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths” - she argued. Columnist Hopkins called them "cockroaches" in The Sun, Britain's largest-circulating newspaper, on April 17.. "Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care" - she wrote. "What we need are gunships sending these boats back to their own country. You want to make a better life for yourself? Then you had better get creative in Northern Africa." The vast majority of refugees make for Libya, where local gangs prey on migrants, and racism against darker-skinned Africans is common. Libya's lawlessness has made traveling through the country even more dangerous and unpredictable. Two horrible tragedies in or at least near Libya: up to 800 migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa die after their boat sinks off the coast, and 30 migrants are murdered by the so-called Islamic State on the shore in the troubled country. Last year, a record 170,000 refugees flooded across the Mediterranean, traveling in large part out of Libya and arriving in Italy. In January, the number of refugees and migrants reached Italy from Libya, showed a 60 percent increase from January 2014. They come from all over Africa and the Middle East. The Eritreans are fleeing a brutal regime which dragoons young men into military conscription and maintains a semi-permanent war footing with neighboring Ethiopia. Syrians and Iraqis are fleeing the war and atrocities committed by the self-described Islamic State, Palestinians the open prison that is Gaza, and West Africans the crushing poverty that has framed many of their lives ... For Europe, there's no prospect of a new Qaddafi to act as warden. In Libya itself a power vacuum since the 2011 fall of dictator Qaddafi has enabled gangs of human traffickers to flourish ... (Source: Christian Science Monitor): http://tinyurl.com/qxeoufy
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