On a recent chilly day, people smugglers loaded more than 3,800 Africans onto 20 flimsy boats on beaches in Libya, forcing some aboard at gunpoint. They gave some of them satellite phones programmed with the number of Italy’s Coast Guard central command in Rome and then set them afloat.
After hours at sea in frigid temperatures, the migrants called the Italians for help. Over the next three days, the command center orchestrated a nonstop rescue operation. At one point, near the Libyan coast, four smugglers brandishing Kalashnikovs threatened a Coast Guard vessel carrying 247 migrants, demanding the sailors return one of the migrant boats.
ENLARGE“We are facing an exodus of epic proportions,” Adm. Giovanni Pettorino, head of operations for the Coast Guard, said a few days later. “And it’s becoming much more difficult and dangerous for us. But we can’t leave anyone to die.”
The large flow of boatpeople crossing the Mediterranean this winter, a season that normally sees a sharp drop in such voyages, heralds what is likely to be a record-breaking year on one of the world’s busiest and most dangerous migrant routes. Since Jan. 1, about 9,500 migrants have attempted the passage to Italy, 70% more than in the same period last year. The head of Frontex, the EU’s border-control body, says hundreds of thousands of people in Libya could be preparing to make the crossing.
The surge exposes the burden Italy still shoulders in coping with the influx. The fractious response from the EU to the tide of boats, meanwhile, reflects Europe’s inability to craft a coherent policy on migration. The result: a patchwork of conflicting immigration policies that has deepened acrimony among member states.
Last year, about 218,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean by boat, with at least 3,500 dying, making it the world’s deadliest migration route. The vast majority departed from Libya headed to Italy.
After about 360 Africans drowned off the coast of Lampedusa in October 2013, Italy hastily assembled an aggressive operation—dubbed Mare Nostrum—of Navy patrols that rescued more than 170,000 migrants last year.
‘We are facing an exodus of epic proportions.’
Last fall, after heavy criticism of Mare Nostrum by anti-immigrant groups, Rome persuaded the EU toestablish new sea patrols, dubbed Operation Triton, to substitute for Mare Nostrum.
But EU members contribute voluntarily to Triton, and a reluctance to fund search-and-rescue operations left the operation with a budget of just €2.9 million ($3.1 million) a month, a third of Mare Nostrum’s. The operation, which started Nov. 1, also has a mandate to go no further than 30 miles from the Italian coast.
This winter has quickly exposed the weaknesses of Triton. The expansion of Islamic State and the breakdown of law and order in Libya is driving more people to flee to Italy. Meanwhile, Africa’s swelling population means migration to Europe has become a permanent phenomenon. “We’ve been managing this problem in a piecemeal way,” says Alfonso Giordano, professor at Rome’s Luiss University. “But this is a structural problem now.”
Matthew Okosodo, a 26-year-old Nigerian, was working in Libya as a cleaner when the rising violence prompted him to seek the help of people-smugglers to leave last month. When he saw the rough sea conditions at his departure, he refused to board the flimsy inflatable dinghy the smugglers had organized. One pointed a gun at his face and forced Mr. Okosodo and others, including two pregnant women, aboard.
“People were screaming and vomiting on the boat,” he recalled. “I was, too. We had no water or food.” After a few hours, the Italians rescued the group.
The end of Mare Nostrum and the limited mandate of Triton have left the Italians undertaking search-and-rescue operations that are riskier for the Coast Guard and for the migrants themselves.
The huge Navy ships involved in Mare Nostrum hewed close to the Libyan coast and reached the migrant boats quickly. Now, much smaller Coast Guard cutters are dispatched from Sicily or Lampedusa, taking longer to reach the boats. “With Mare Nostrum, it took half the time to reach these boats,” Adm. Pettorino said.
The smugglers have also adopted new, more brutal tactics to bolster their revenue, migrants and officials say. In early February, people smugglers forced young African migrants—clad in little more than T-shirts and without food and water—to board an inflatable raft amid gale force winds and frigid temperatures. Twenty-nine of them died of hypothermia.
The situation has forced the Triton patrols to venture beyond their 30-mile perimeter, blurring its core mission. The Italians have repeatedly called on Triton vessels to assist in rescue operations close to the Libyan coast. Triton, which cannot refuse a request for help, has helped save a third of the 22,300 people rescued since November.
The large numbers, as well as the deaths of at least 300 migrants last month, pushed the EU to extend Triton until at least the end of the year and give Rome more money for its own search-and-rescue efforts. Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU’s migration commissioner, said Brussels would “react quickly” should Italy want more help.
Europe’s stopgap response to the boat people reflects the contradictions of the EU’s approach to immigration in general. The abolishment of internal borders piled the pressure on countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy. Meanwhile, radically different immigration policies with the EU have opened deep rifts.
The EU say 177,000 applications for asylum were filed in the third quarter of 2014, 50% higher than the same period in 2013. But decisions on awarding asylum are undertaken on a national basis, resulting in wildly different rates of accepting asylum claims. Many migrants head to Germany and Sweden, which together make up about half of all asylum claims because of high acceptance rates.
Last week, EU officials said they aim to have a pan-European agenda on immigration ready by May. This week, Italian officials began pushing for the establishment of EU-backed reception centers in African countries where migrants could apply for asylum Europe, thus discouraging them from making the dangerous passage.
But most expect little real progress, unless a surge in deaths in the Mediterranean forces the leaders to take action.
“No one expected such a big number of arrivals this winter,” says Eugenio Ambrosi, European regional director for the IOM. “The numbers will increase with the summer. We’ll have to see if that pushes the discussion ahead.”
Write to Deborah Ball at deborah.ball@wsj.com and Giovanni Legorano at giovanni.legorano@wsj.com
(Source: Wall Street Journal
