Watery graves

Something is fundamentally wrong with an international order in which forlorn refugees and immigrants seeking safety and dignity keep sinking in boat accidents. The deaths of 300-odd Africans fleeing war and human rights abuse in Somalia and Eritrea, just 800 metres off the Italian island of Lampedusa, is a metaphor for how near and yet so far distressed humans are from salvation. The capsized rickety vessel, now at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, is a ghastly symbol of where the suppressed and unwanted belong — in the netherworld. According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 25,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in the past two decades, en route from West Asia and North Africa to Europe. When humans are driven up the wall by political brutality and economic collapse in their homelands, they vote with their feet and go wherever there is the faintest hope. Some migrants know they may perish along the way but are impelled by despair and lured by unscrupulous human smugglers who paint rosy pictures of protection and employment in advanced economies of Europe. Most have nothing left to lose in their homeland or transit country and believe the boats will either bring deliverance or relieve them through death. Who exactly is responsible for the intolerable living conditions in the countries of origin of these refugees and migrants Internal chaos and failure of domestic governance in North Africa and West Asia are the obvious primary causes for pushing refugees and migrants towards deadly sea voyages. But one must not forget wider international accountability for destabilisation of these volatile regions. Take the example of Libya, which has been named by the European Union (EU) as the “biggest concern” and the main point of embarkation for migrants and refugees aiming to reach Italy. Libya is today a failed state where heavily armed rival militias rule patches of land with no government in sight. Ever since France, Britain and the United States waged an illegal war to topple the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya has been devoured by anarchy and religious extremism. Gaddafi himself had manipulated the migration outflow issue to extract economic and diplomatic concessions from European nations, but in the total breakdown following his fall, Libya turned into a lawless territory akin to Somalia. The summary executions, gang wars and kidnappings, which are the norm now in Libya, triggered recent waves of refugees and immigrants headed for Lampedusa. Western powers which bombed Libya to overthrow Gaddafi cannot wash their hands off the problem by blaming Libyans for what the EU labels as a “non-consolidated and difficult-to-govern emerging institutional framework”. If Gaddafi had played tribal politics and divided his country, Western intelligence agencies did the same, but they also weaponised Libya so rampantly that it exacerbated the refugee and immigrant exodus. France, Britain and the US claim to intervene militarily in North Africa and West Asia for grandiose moral principles — the “responsibility to protect”, for example — but there seems to be no Western “responsibility to rebuild” societies after they have been pulverised by aerial attacks. It would be only fair for France, Italy and Britain to absorb Libyan refugees given that these three European states took the lead in destroying Libya during the protracted war of 2011. But instead of opening their doors to people suffering as a direct result of Western military and foreign policies, European states have resorted to a “NIMBY” (Not in my backyard) discourse. Covering up historical and contemporary faults of propping up authoritarian regimes and exploiting natural resources in North Africa and West Asia, European nations are passing the buck from one to the other when confronted with miserable refugees and immigrants crossing the Mediterranean. Italy and Spain blame the rest of the EU for sheltering behind geographical distance from North Africa and West Asia and offloading the full burden on the shoulders of just Rome and Madrid, which are under acute economic crisis. Economically sick Greece has tightened its land borders with Turkey, thereby condemning refugees and immigrants to perilous sea routes. Germany, on the other hand, accuses Italy of financially inducing refugees and migrants who manage to arrive on Italian soil to head north to more prosperous parts of Europe. After the latest boat tragedy carrying Somalis and Eritreans occurred, opinion makers have stressed how disjointed and insensitive the overall EU policy on refugees and migrants is. The absence of a single EU-wide regime for refugees and migrants is frequently bemoaned by human rights advocates. But apart from calling for equitable sharing of the tasks of receiving and justly assessing asylum and migration claims among all EU members, the West’s larger responsibility for colonising and later re-colonising Africa and West Asia are rarely brought into the debate. Most “solutions” to the endless crisis of refugees and immigrants drowning in the Mediterranean are technical and administrative, missing the core political problem of Western aggression in and destruction of countries like Libya, Somalia and Syria. Receiving refugees and migrants is a small contribution to make for Europeans and Americans who have sponsored proxy wars and rendered countries in North Africa and West Asia ungovernable. Immigration and refugee inflows are a boomerang effect, if not a revenge, of the colonies. Once European governments and public opinion acknowledge and appreciate this deeper debt, their attitudes to the hapless victims in the Mediterranean would become more humane. The renewed ascent of neo-fascist, anti-immigrant parties across Europe is an additional threat to refugees and migrants caught in limbo. Europe’s ruling parties are politically reluctant to challenge widespread anti-foreigner sentiment whipped up by xenophobic extremists. Hence the phenomenon of “fortress Europe” that is closed to immigrants — an ironic outcome because European countries have abnormally high median ages (mostly above 40 years) and require an influx of young migrants to remain economically viable. Western racism and neocolonialism are the ultimate hurdles to resolving the crisis. Recognising and overcoming these obstacles hold the key to a durable solution for this conscience-tugging tragedy.

The writer is a professor and dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs