confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
A spreading crisis
Blue Lines
The crisis that has Libya
at its centre has been brewing since
oppositionists – backed by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation airpower
– overthrew Moammar el Gadaffi’s
regime in 2011. Despite hopes for a
transition to a stable and prosperous democracy underwritten by
Africa’s biggest oil reserves, Libya has become an object lesson in the
unintended consequences of armed intervention.
The crisis zone now stretches from the south – Mali, Niger and Burkina
Faso – to Egypt, which
this week publicly launched an air war on the
Islamist militants fighting for control of Tripolitania (western
Libya). To the north, the zone stretches to the Italian island of
Lampedusa, to which thousands of refugees are fleeing, desperate to
escape Libya’s inferno. The confrontation between Libya’s secularists
and its Islamists has morphed into a regional war: this week Egypt
called for a United Nations-backed force to fight Libya’s Islamists.
Qatar and Sudan still back the Islamists.
Most scandalous, however, since the horrific deaths and drownings could
be avoided, is European Union policy towards the desperate migrants
trying to cross the Mediterranean. It seems some EU officials regard
the casualty rates as a useful deterrent. For a while, Italy beefed up
its coastguard and saved shipwrecked refugees but the EU cut funds for
the programme. Now Italy’s offer to send 5,000 troops to an
international force in Libya shows fresh thinking. Just how that force
might work is another matter. The UN is making only halting progress in
brokering negotiations between the two sides.