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Europe's New Libya Mission Draws Criticism

Jamie Dettmer

   LONDON - European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to launch a
   revamped mission to try to monitor and enforce an international weapons
   embargo on warn-torn Libya. After meeting European counterparts, German
   Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced naval assets would be deployed to
   the Mediterranean to help enforce the ban.

   The German foreign minister told reporters the planned EU mission was a
   major step toward fulfilling the EU's commitment made in Berlin last
   month at an international conference to honor the routinely flouted
   arms embargo in a bid to stabilize the North African country.
   "We all agreed to create a mission to block the entry of arms into
   Libya," said Italy's foreign minister, Luigi di Maio, after the meeting
   in Brussels.
   The new mission is a revival of Operation Sophia, which was launched in
   2015 with the dual mission of curbing human trafficking from North
   Africa to Europe, while also trying to enforce the U.N. arms embargo on
   Libya. But few observers believe the new mission will have much impact
   as EU naval assets will be deployed at least 100 kilometers away from
   the Libyan coast.

   The decision to circumscribe the mission to a limited geographic zone,
   one that easily can be circumnavigated by gunrunners, was the only way
   to overcome opposition to the deployment of warships by several
   European leaders led by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The
   Austrian leader has for weeks argued that deploying ships in the
   Mediterranean Sea would act as a "pull factor" for migrants trying to
   reach Europe from Libya.

   With fears mounting that Europe could see another massive influx of
   asylum-seekers from the Middle East and Africa -- thanks to political
   turmoil in Lebanon and a Russian-backed offensive by Syrian President
   Bashar al-Assad in the north of his country -- EU critics of a
   deployment off the coast of Libya said the mission would morph quickly
   from embargo-enforcement to rescuing migrants.

   EU warships would have little choice but to pick up migrants trying to
   make the perilous Mediterranean crossing, they said, repeating what
   happened to Operation Sophia, which had its naval assets stripped away
   last year under pressure from the populist coalition that was then in
   power in Rome.

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