Humanitarian lyricism

Last week, the European Commission announced the first proposals it will be adopting to improve ‘the management of migration’.
“Everyone who needs sanctuary should find it in Europe,” a top bureaucrat said but only after noting that “solidarity goes hand in hand with responsibility”.
One might get the impression that all will move along smoothly, bringing progress, order and humanity to the crisis and chaos to the south and east of what – according to the latest projections – used to be the world’s most prosperous area before being surpassed by China.
Tens of thousands are fleeing war and poverty in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Migrants face hardship and exploitation every step of the way. So this latest set of European measures ostensibly comes as a response to recent tragedies, especially off the shores of Libya which has become one of the main stopover points for migrants wishing to reach Europe.
But apart from commendable assistance measures, such as the granting of aid to Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq, countries bearing the brunt of Syrian and Iraq refugees fleeing ISIL, there is no denying that European countries are looking to increase their military presence in the Mediterranean and at the same time impose controls on old and new arrivals – be they economic migrants, refugees or exiles. The reasoning behind this is to deal with smuggler networks.
There is no denying that such networks exist, feeding off the most vulnerable. Moreover, these networks are not just made up of sly foreigners. In Greece, which along with Italy faces the greatest number of migrant inflows this year, there were recent leaked reports that top police officers and security services personnel were under investigation for working together with people-traffickers in Turkey and beyond. But will ‘10 maritime, 33 land and 8 air assets, and 121 human resources’, disposing of smugglers’ boats ‘or rendering them inoperable’ do the trick?
One may laugh – or flinch – after watching EU and Nato dignitaries singing ‘We are the World’ at a conference in Turkey but then again one should pay closer attention to what else is happening.
For one, it is deeply worrying that despite the horrible situation in Libya, what is left of its government immediately rejected the measures when they started being made public. Indeed, what would a ‘EU military operation in the Southern Central Mediterranean’ actually entail? And would US-led Nato have a role?
A top British military commander said that Nato could aid the EU’s migrant mission if there were political will, while Italy’s foreign minister has suggested that Nato’s current counter-terrorism naval mission could be modified.
After all, the military hardware and personnel is already there. As a US admiral noted, “[s]ailors from Algeria, Croatia, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Mauritania, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey and the United States all in one place – talk about your Global Network of Navies”.
A trend for militarising migration is becoming apparent under a veneer of humanitarian lyricism, especially if one digs deeper.So are European countries ultimately planning to establish a presence in the countries at their borders? Will the EU attempt to establish a presence in Libya, as it already has done in Niger, just to the south of Libya?
Recent research shows that Europeans strongly believe that Europe should keep spending money on humanitarian aid. This provides an opportunity for further centralisation of political power in the European Union, with supra-national structures absorbing more power from national ones.
Excerpted from: ‘Stop gunboat humanitarianism’.
Courtesy. Aljazeera.com