"When these tragedies happen, Britain is always there" Prime Minister David Cameron 23/04/15
In a speech on Foreign Affairs given on the 24/04/15 the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition Ed Milliband claimed that the Prime Minister David Cameron was "in part" responsible for the current Libyan Migrant Crisis. Milliband's rather belated criticism was of David Cameron's failure to engage in or fund reconstruction in Libya following the Anglo/French/Italian/US/Qatari bombing campaign to overthrow the regime of Colonel Gaddafi. Even before the speech was made Mr Milliband's remarks were denounced as disgraceful by apoplectic Tories though even right-wing commentators such as Con Coughlin of The Telegraph thought there was much merit to Mr Milliband's claim. Unfortunately the Labour opposition had no objection to the campaign to overthrow Gaddafi at the time so they too share the responsibility for the consequences.
Gaddafi of course had long been demonised in the West and of course it would be a brave politician who could have a good word for the man responsible for the murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher let alone the man who ordered the bombing of Pan Am flight PA103. Of course he did no such thing. The evidence on which Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi was convicted was concocted by agencies of the British and American Governments for political objectives, primarily regime change in Libya, unrelated to the bombing itself. Perhaps the lie that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie was a prime consideration for policymakers. Perhaps David Cameron even believed it to be true in a real sense rather than simply "true" in the politician's sense.
Of course Western intervention in Libya, was tarted-up as liberal interventionism, Gadaffi having rid himself of his "weapons of mass destruction" which may have been as fictitious as Saddam Hussein's. It was a supposed humanitarian mission to prevent Gaddafi carrying out his threat to unleash his tiny army to massacre the inhabitants of Benghazi. Gaddafi had little in his armoury besides threats. Had he the power to do it? Would the Army have obeyed his orders? Or would the people of Libya have liberated themselves from this deranged tyrant?
Of course no-one could have predicted Libya's descent into a failed state and the consequences for the West. Well somebody did. In a BBC report of the 31/8/2010 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11139345 headed "Gaddafi wants EU cash to stop African migrants"
The text read
"Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi says the EU should pay Libya at least 5bn euros (£4bn:$6.3bn) a year to stop illegal African immigration and avoid a "black Europe".
Speaking on a vistit to Italy, Col Gaddafi said Europe "could turn into Africa" as "there are millions of Africans who want to come in".
Italy has drawn criticism for handing over to Libya migrants it intercepts at sea, without screening them first."
Gaddafi's financial demands might well be seen as an unwarranted demand with menaces. Indeed the Italians under Berlusconi were paying Libya (or Gaddafi personally!) billions of Euros supposedly as reparations for Italy's brutal occupation of Libya. How much of this trickled down to the man on the Tripoli omnibus (and how much found its way back to Italy) is not known.
While David Cameron had reversed his policy in respect of "search and rescue" there was of course no recognition that these migrants had a right to asylum, from amongst other things Eritrea's draft. (Who do these people think they are Americans?) Apparently his plan is to rescue these people in Libyan waters and transport them to the nearest country Italy. Whether the Italians will permit them to land is another matter, which would of course give Mr Cameron a pretext to take his ball home. In rescuing these migrants I would urge the Naval Staff to be mindful of the fate of the USS Cole.)
Perhaps some lessons could be drawn from an earlier similar phenomena the Vietnamese Boat People.
In the late 1970's/early 1980s a major Criminal syndicate, headed by right wing Vietnamese exiles had coalesced organising a series of Maritime Insurance Frauds known as ship-sinkings. In this racket rustbucket freighters were supposedly loaded with goods exported by Companies under the syndicate's control. It is unlikely the cargo existed other than on paper. After the ship set sail it sank in International waters the crew taking to the lifeboats. (The Captain never went down with the ship.) In fact the ships were not sunk at all but were sailed off and given new identities. (For example with a lick of paint The Skyluck became the The kylu.)
In response to this racket the London Insurance Market set up FERIT, the Far East Regional Investigation Team to co-ordinate Police (and Military) countermeasures. Shortly after FERIT was established the shipsinkings stopped, to much backslapping and self-congratulation. The syndicate had little to fear from the Police who had largely been taken care off. The syndicate had not abandoned their frauds (other incredibly lucrative fraudulent activities were pursued by the gang). They had simply found a far more lucrative use for their freighters. They were used to transport the Vietnamese boat people from Vietnamese ports westwards towards Hong Kong.
This was one of the most lucrative Criminal enterprises in human history and was much facilitated by the US refusal to normalise relations with Vietnam (the MIA hioax having been created as an obstacle to normalisation.) Perhaps this racket was a little known aspect of the world-wide anti-communist crusade known as "Iran-Contra" and the profits were used in part to fund other Iran-Contra ventures such as the Contra War in Central America.
Update 11/5/15
Today the European Union announced a plan to distribute the migrants amongst all the member countries of the EU on a quota basis (the number of migrants involved being almost limitless.) How this scheme would work, or could work is not clear. We shall see how much European solidarity means.
On the same day the Governments of Slovakia and Hungary, in response to Prime Minister Cameron's plans to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU declared that the principal of the free movement of labour was sacrosanct. Perhaps what they actually mean is that their right to discriminate against their Roma community and encourage them to move elsewhere (ie to the UK) is sacrosanct. The principal of "Free Movement of Labour" may be in part a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
As the migrants travelling across the Mediterranean to Italy are essentially economic migrants the EU's plans to resettle them in countries such as Greece, Romania, Bulgaria the Baltic States ect. is unlikely to be met with a favourable response by the migrants themselves and there is nothing to stop them continuing their journey. Perhaps Mr Cameron's election pledge to create 2 million jobs in the UK did not go unnoticed outside the UK. And what have Slovakia and Hungary? As they discriminate against the Roma it seems unlikely that they will accept their quota of African migrants with open arms. Perhaps they will do what Greece use to do with Albanians crossing the border. They gave them Greek passports!
