Mogherini’s mission impossible

There are three broad directions that the EU foreign policy chief will need to consider as she tackles the migration crisis.

The migrants keep coming across the Mediterranean and all eyes will soon turn to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, charged with forging a path out of the crisis before a Foreign Affairs Council meeting on May 18 — and before the next tragedy.

After a dark week in April, when almost 1,300 migrants perished at sea trying to cross from Libya to Italy, EU leaders tasked Mogherini to draft a plan to squash the deadly business of human trafficking.

The demand: identify, capture and destroy the vessels used by smugglers.

But the preparation of such a military operation looks like a mission impossible.

On Tuesday, just as Mogherini traveled to Peking to get the Chinese approval in the UN Security Council for a military action against the smuggler boats, Russia announced it would oppose such plans.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon rejected the idea as well.

“Such operations to destroy the vessels are illusionary,” Jean-Paul Thonier, a French general, told POLITICO.

Since the EU does not want to send troops on the Libyan ground, it would need “to strike over long distance, with missiles or torpedoes,” but “the risk of civilian causalities is too high,” Thonier said. Nobody would want to sink a boat where refugees or fishers might be on board, Thonier said, who commanded the EU’s first military mission to Africa, Operation Artemis, in 2003.

Next Monday, Mogherini will brief the UN Security Council on her efforts. But as the migrant pressure rises — this past weekend 6,800 came by boat over the sea — and the military solution risks to fall apart, she will need to find further options.

There are three broad directions to go.

Forging a deal with Libya’s two governments and the clans

The EU needs an ally in Libya, as the majority of migrants arrive from the North African country. If a military intervention to destroy smugglers’ boats seems now unlikely, other options include pursuing something similar to the EU operation Atalanta, which fights pirates off the coast of Somalia and is considered highly effective in preventing attacks.

But first Brussels needs to forge consensus between the two governments fighting for control: one in the east, in Tobruk, and the other in Tripoli.

The EU needs the Libyans’ approval, otherwise entering their waters would be an act of war. Bernardino León is the UN envoy in Libya trying to foster a deal between the two sides.

The challenge: Reaching a consensus is proving difficult. Indeed, at the end of last month, León proposed a draft that was rejected by the Tripoli Parliament. The rebuff was widely expected, since it recognized the rival Parliament in Tobruk  as the legitimate authority, Arturo Varvelli, a Libya and terrorism expert at the Italian Institute for Political Studies said. Most countries, including the United States, have recognized the Tobruk-based Parliament as Libya’s legitimate authority.

Beyond those divisions, getting the unruly Libyan tribes on board could be even more of a challenge. Talks are ongoing, as well as discussions between the UN envoy and EU countries on how to support the Libyan government, if an agreement is reached. The goal is to sign a deal by Ramadan, in the middle of June. But without Tripoli’s backing “the danger for the UN and the EU,”  argues Varvelli “is to have a deal that then does not hold up.”

León was not available to comment.

A maritime blockade

The idea to “set up a European naval force to hinder the vessels from leaving the Libyan coasts” was suggested by the former French Prime Minister François Fillon, who also is running in his party’s primary elections ahead of the 2017 presidential vote, in an interview with Canal+.

Technically, this would be possible, general Thonier told POLITICO. “If there is one field where the different European armies can work well together, it’s the navy,” Thonier said. “There are no problems of coordination, as the successful operation Atalanta to fight the pirates in front of the Somalian coast has shown.”

The intelligence services could infiltrate the trafficker cartels and observe the coasts with satellites or drones to know exactly when a vessel launches. Only a minor number of well-equipped navy ships in the Libyan waters would be needed, which could then “send speed boats or helicopters that intercept the vessels and force them to turn back,” Thonier said.

The goal is to discourage migrants when they see that the smuggler boats return to the coast without success.

The challenge: The proposal neglects to acknowledge the ruthlessness of the human traffickers: Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi warned in April that the smugglers could use the blockade as “a sort of taxi” and just throw the migrants into the water when the EU boats arrive, forcing them to rescue people instead of pushing the vessels back.

Furthermore, Michael Benhamou, a former political adviser from NATO, told POLITICO that some trafficker vessels are “already armed with Kalashnikovs.” If the EU pushed the boats back, the situation could heat up with traffickers firing and EU troops hesitant to return fire at the risk of civilian casualties.

French MEP Arnaud Danjean from the European People’s Party and member of the security and defense subcommittee, doubts that the EU has the necessary means for such a blockade: “We have limited satellite and drone capabilities to observe the borders and the Mediterranean. At the moment, without American help, this would be difficult.”

Beefing up search & rescue

This is more or less the status quo option — and the easiest to apply, with many nations already sending ships. Triton, the EU patrolling mission in the Mediterranean, is still expecting extra funds promised at an extraordinary Council meeting last month. The money will come from the European budget’s reserve, and the European Commission aims to present the amended budget by mid-May, after which the European Parliament and the Council will have to approve it. “The launch of the reinforced Joint Operations is foreseen as soon as possible in May,” according to a source in the Commission.

Frontex is expecting €9 million a month to lease extra military vessels and can operate up to 30 nautical miles from the Italian coastline whereas its predecessor, the Italian-backed Mare Nostrum, had a much wider mandate operating in international waters.

The difference may only be on paper, according to an Italian investigator in Sicily who declined to be identified. “From this point of view Triton and Mare Nostrum are basically the same thing. On paper Triton could not go that far, but we see from GPS positions that often their vessels operate only 40 miles away from the Libyan coast,” he told POLITICO.

The challenge: Triton now costs as much as Mare Nostrum, which was scrapped last year because it was considered too expensive and after some governments, notably the British, called it an incentive for immigrants to try crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

Italian prosecutors investigating smugglers complain that Mare Nostrum was more effective in terms of coordination compared to Triton, which serves many masters: “Mare Nostrum allowed for an immediate start of the investigations, which is what has allowed my office to arrest the most dangerous smugglers with the help of the Italian navy,” Giovanni Salvi, head of the prosecution office in Catania, Sicily, said at a press conference two weeks ago.

With calm waters this summer on their way, the number of immigrants attempting to reach the Sicilian coast is likely to rise.

In the meantime negotiations continue. “Both, the Russian position and the reluctance of the Tripoli parliament, can be bargaining chips” tells POLITICO a EU officer.

But no one thinks there are easy — or quick — answers.

“The challenges we are facing today,” says  Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party, the Parliament’s biggest political group, “are long-term and we will have to deal with them over the next ten years at least.”