Taming Libya's Mad Dog

This article co-written with Daniel Korski, appeared on the website of the European Council on Foreign Relations

Each new protest in the Middle East has confronted the West with a different kind of challenge. Tunisia was primarily a test for the former colonial power, France, which had cosied up to Ben Ali's regime, in part to avoid sea-borne migration. Egypt, meanwhile, challenged the United States and its fifty year-old policy of backing the region's strongmen in exchange for policy agreements - for example on Israel and Iran. The protests in Yemen, Al Qaeda’s ancestral home, threw up problems for Britain in its fight against Islamist terrorism.

Now, protests and an unusually violent crackdown in Libya has presented an altogether new test for the West. In some ways it is easier, in some ways harder. Ever since he gave up Libya's WMD program in 2003 and claimed to end support for terrorism, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has played the West largely by his own rules. Sitting on vast reserves of untapped oil has enabled him to cultivate ever closer relations with Western powers.

Newly-declassified documents show that British officials advised the previous government that they should "work actively but discreetly" for Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi's release in a deal thought to have included commercial motivations. Libya is the 11th largest exporter of goods into the EU, a higher place than Canada and Taiwan. Its most notable exports are of petroleum and petroleum products - Libya accounts for 6.9% of EU energy imports, just behind Norway and Russia on the list. No doubt with these figures in mind, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Libya's former colonial power, said of the ongoing repression that he did not wish to "disturb" Gaddafi.

The close European-Libyan cooperation has not, however, prevented the Tripoli regime from making mischievous threats to Europe, most recently that of flooding the continent with sub-saharan migrants. If the regime does not cooperate in stopping illegal migrants from crossing the Mediterranean Sea and reaching Europe, the numbers could surge to some 40,000 would-be migrants a year from a current annual rate of 7,300.

This goes to show that unlike the United States, geography represents a defining factor of the European reaction to this crisis. Only last week, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini wrote in the Financial Times that 'this "arc of crisis" will lead to more illegal immigration, terrorism and Islamic radicalism.' A failed state in the horn of Africa looks less threatening than one the opposite shore of the Mediterranean. Especially one with lengthy historical links to Europe.
The economic and political embrace of Libya has made it considerably more difficult for some European leaders to extricate themselves from Gaddafi's script while his "mad dog" reputation allowed them to shrug their shoulders over his cartoonish antics. But the recent events mean European leaders can no longer look the other way. In trying to re-establish control, the Gaddafi regime have plunged to depths not seen elsewhere in the region.

Security forces have fired on protesters with high-velocity sniper rifles, machine guns and even anti-aircraft artillery. Rumours swirl that mercenaries have been recruited. Women and children were seen jumping off the Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to get away. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned. Human Rights Watch reports numbers of deaths in the hundreds, since the unrest began spreading from the eastern provinces.

Yet, the fact that few conditions were attached to the post-2003 rapprochement gives the West more room for manoeuvring. In the case of Libya, which does not have a treaty with the EU, this should include the prospect of new sanctions. Inevitably, any talk of penalties will be associated with the complex historical legacies of European oppression and colonisation. But should it come to that, sanctions would not equal isolation. It was a combination of sanctions and intense dialogue with the regime that led Gaddafi's to renounce the WMD programme.

Moreover, the EU has demonstrated the ability to move rapidly into a tougher mode than a month ago in the case of Belarus. Two years of engagement with Belarus, which included substantial European investments, did not prevent EU leaders from re-imposing a visa ban on Lukashenko's regime in response to a crackdown on the opposition. As repression begins to look like carnage, the Libyan case should be treated no differently.

As a first step, the EU should impose an immediate travel ban on all key Libyan officials. At the same time, preparations should be put in place for a freeze of Libyan assets held in Europe. European governments should put forward a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council condemning Libya’s actions. To ensure that Europe’s southern flank is able to deal with a wave of migrants unleashed by a scornful regime, planning should commence for FRONTEX, the EU’s border agency, to help the states most likely to receive the flow of migrants.

If there ever was a need and an opportunity for Europe to show its muscles, Colonel Gaddafi is providing one.

Calling Europe's Bluff in North Africa

This article first appeared in openDemocracy

An old Moroccan legend has it that the people of Andalusia, in Southern Spain, once complained to king Alexander of Macedonia about the continuing pillaging at the hands of the north African Berbers. The king ordered his best engineers to dig a huge channel between Spain and Africa. The Strait of Gibraltar thus came to be and the Andalusians lived in security happily ever after.

In the face of the momentous popular upheaval shaking north Africa, Europe is still living the fairy tale. At a meeting on 31 January, EU foreign ministers reached out to the new authorities in post-Ben Ali Tunisia and expressed their support for an "orderly transition" in Egypt. But the message during recent years has been something strikingly different: Europe has neither encouraged democratic transformation nor prioritised reforms in the region. Much like the Andalusians, the paramount objective has been to keep north Africa at arm's length from Europe.

Two sets of reasons - one socio-economic, the other socio-political - have underpinned such an attitude. The socio-economic pressures include unemployment, which stands at double-digit rates in most countries in north Africa. Moreover, the demographic time-bomb has not been defused: the population of north Africa and the middle east is expected to grow from the present 280 million to nearly equal that of Europe with some 400-450 million inhabitants by 2020.

This latter figure forms the background to the socio-political challenge. The primary concern here is Europe's angst about immigration. The dehydrated boat people stranded on the beaches of southern Europe account for a minimal fraction of the migrants entering the EU every year. Yet, the Mediterranean has become the main testing ground for Europe's stance on immigration, because scenes there strike at the feeling of discord within multicultural Europe. Then there is that which the oft-quoted Arab Human Development Report has called the "freedom deficit" of the region - corrupt regimes coupled with severe restrictions of political rights and civil liberties - which is now challenged by events from Cairo to Sanaa in Yemen.

Faced with these challenges, Brussels has ended up accepting the standard alibi made by Arab autocrats, whereby opening the political system would pave the way for takeovers by Islamic extremists. The EU has thus favoured economic cooperation in the hope that more widespread prosperity would eventually spill over to political reforms. To be fair, Europe is not the only culprit here. EU countries are north Africa's largest trading partner, so economic cooperation makes good sense. Financial assistance and macro-economic programs in the Mediterranean have been co-financed by the International Monetary Fund and follow standards set by the World Bank. Still, the charge that economic support should accompany-and not precede-political reforms on the receiving end pertains to the EU, no less than to international financial institutions.

The main trouble with the EU has been in the gap between political rhetoric and operational reality. For all the European declarations, north Africa observers never had many illusions about the prospect of trade liberalization with the EU. Far more concrete has been European protectionism on, most notably, agricultural products and textiles. Add to that the bilateral oil and gas deals that continue to flow between some European countries and the likes of Libya or Algeria, and Europe's arbitrariness towards the region becomes dramatically apparent.

With events still unfolding on the Arab street, what should Europe do now? As we have argued in a recent policy brief, the EU's policy toolbox is comprehensive and detailed enough to ensure strong support for the reform process. While a more effective EU policy is deeply desirable, the guiding principles of governance reform are all enshrined in the existing policy framework and contain the right incentive structure. These standards are applicable to any new reform-minded government sitting in Tunis or Cairo.

At the same time, the EU will have to be smarter and stricter in how its policy instruments are implemented. Any talk of penalties or sanctions is associated with the complex historical legacies of European oppression and colonisation. However, these punitive conditions are crucial to send a signal to governments moving away from their commitments.

Above all, the dramatic events in north Africa should elicit a profound reflection inside Europe about how the EU portrays itself on the world stage, and how it is perceived by its counterparts. This is not about repeating the inward-looking exercise that characterised the EU institutional debate of the past half-decade. The reflection should be primarily about the priorities and values that the EU aims to promote, and about how these should be promoted. The ongoing review process of the EU's ailing Neighbourhood Policy is the best place to start.

At the height of America's occupation of Iraq, European diplomats were quite keen to privately remark that their more modest framework was still wiser than "regime change." It has introduced a regional praxis of dialogue and consultation where previously there was none. The north African states have not followed Iran on a theocratic path. All this is true, except that the original plan was not damage-limitation. Europe aimed at inspiring comprehensive political and economic reforms; its stated ambition was region-building, widespread stability and prosperity.
None of this has happened and the revolutions in north Africa have called Europe's bluff.