{"id":73716,"date":"2016-05-16T12:02:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T11:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=73716"},"modified":"2016-05-16T12:02:47","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T11:02:47","slug":"the-eu-refugee-rescue-mission-is-a-triumph-of-humanitarianism-not-that-youll-hear-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/the-eu-refugee-rescue-mission-is-a-triumph-of-humanitarianism-not-that-youll-hear-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU Refugee Rescue Mission Is a Triumph of Humanitarianism \u2013 Not That You\u2019ll Hear about It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robert<\/a>If Operation Sophia was designed to \u2018tackle the root causes\u2019 of the refugee crisis, we need to talk about justice, dignity and freedom for the people of the Middle East.<\/em><\/p>\n

13 May 2016 – <\/em>EUNavforMed \u2013 or Operation Sophia, to give the gig its more romantic title \u2013 is a real success story.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the \u201cfailure\u201d the House of Lords would have us believe in their mean-minded report. EU ships have saved more than 9,000 souls among the poor and huddled masses crossing the Mediterranean, the refuse of Libya\u2019s \u201cteeming shore\u201d. It is a stunning success for the humanitarianism of the EU \u2013 an institution which Britain is thinking of leaving.<\/p>\n

But such is the immoral nature of our reaction to this catastrophic human crisis that our political masters did not dare to put human lives ahead of tackling criminality when they launched the whole fandango a year ago. Well aware that millions of Europeans were not too keen on rescuing the refugees and migrants drowning in Mare Nostrum (and quite a few, alas, rather keen that these poor folk might expire en route<\/em>), Dave Cameron and his mates went banging on about the need to hunt down people-smugglers.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The number of refugees crossing the Med in the first four months of 2014 and 2015 stayed the same at 26,000, but death rates soared.
Aris Messinis\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Personally, I\u2019d rather he hunted down the arms smugglers who are the cause of this bloody tragedy.\u00a0 But that would mean arresting all kinds of well-off gents from the Gulf, Turkey and, indeed, Libya \u2013 along with CIA agents, Russian spooks and quite a few intelligence outfits even closer to home. Impossible.<\/p>\n

So having told us this was all about criminality, Dave and the lads have to faff on about driving \u2018wedges\u2019 into people-smuggling Mafiosi who are supposedly the real culprits.<\/p>\n

Now that we\u2019ve bribed the Turks with a regular annual wodge of greens and easy visas to Europe for their own migrants, rather than the more desperate kind from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, the immediate problem is that we can\u2019t bribe the Libyan government in the same way.\u00a0 First, because it doesn\u2019t exist, thanks partly to our own messing in that tripartite nation, and second because we don\u2019t really have much enthusiasm to send our marines to the shores of Tripoli.<\/p>\n

After all, dispatching our commandoes to Arab lands \u2013 with or without permission from the relevant dictators \u2013 to shoot down the desperados who are packing the coffin ships with human flotsam would immediately bring us into conflict with all kinds of chaps: Isis, al-Qaeda, Nusrah, Boko Haram, freelance militias, Arab government ministers, Gulf allies and Washington cut-outs.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d have to use precision bombing and lots of drones and then, before we knew it and as per usual, we\u2019d be blowing up the camps, clinics and hospitals used by the refugees as well as the gunmen and smugglers before the homeless, \u2018tempest-tossed\u2019 migrants even dipped their toes in the sea.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s highly instructive that one of the most recent EU puffs for Operation Sophia puts the rescue of human life first on its list of mission objectives \u2013 which is where it should be \u2013 and only then waffles on about smugglers.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one killer line at the end, however, that hits us old Middle East hands like a whiplash.\u00a0The purpose of the whole EU project, we are told, is to \u201ctackle the root causes\u201d of the refugee tragedy.<\/p>\n

Surely not? For that would mean we\u2019ve got to talk about justice, dignity and freedom for the people of the Middle East \u2013 which means we\u2019ve got to redesign our policies towards Islam, history, Arab dictators, Israel, the Palestinians, the Kurds.<\/p>\n

We may even have to re-examine our views of Europe, even of the EU. And if we\u2019re going to set sail across the Mediterranean with that kind of ambition, we\u2019d better follow the example of Admiral Lord Nelson who held his telescope to his blind eye at the Battle of Copenhagen and remember what he supposedly\u00a0said: \u201cI see no ships!\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/em>correspondent for <\/em>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including <\/em>The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Operation Sophia was designed to \u2018tackle the root causes\u2019 of the refugee crisis, we need to talk about justice, dignity and freedom for the people of the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}