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        Libyans Doubtful About Europe's Plan to Block 'People Smugglers'

   by Jamie Dettmer

   Libyans say a European Union plan to mount a still-to-be-defined
   military intervention against the people smugglers behind the
   immigration crisis roiling Europe will not stop sub-Saharan Africans
   from trying to cross the Mediterranean. They say only Western economic
   development assistance in the migrants' source countries will help
   solve the problem in the long-term.

   Italy's Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, announced this week he will ask
   the European Union to set up migrant processing camps in Libya to help
   abate the migration crisis roiling his country and impacting the whole
   continent.

   Italy is struggling to accommodate a wave of migrants crossing the
   Mediterranean from Libya, and France, Austria and Switzerland have
   started to send sub-Saharan migrants back to Italy if they first
   entered Europe there. Renzi said Europeans must share the burden and
   migrants should be distributed fairly across the continent.

   But the various European plans being discussed, including a still-to-be
   defined military intervention to disrupt the people-smuggling trade, is
   prompting derision in Libya and claims the Europeans do not understand
   the scale or complexity of the migration.

   Jamal Zubia is the head of the foreign media department of the
   Tripoli-based government, one of two governments locked in a power
   struggle in Libya.

   "They do not want to understand this. When they say, 'We are going to
   hit the infrastructure,' what infrastructure do we have? [They will
   hit] These fishing boats, or they will hit rocks where the fishing
   boats are," said Zubia.

   The European Union has asked the U.N. Security Council to endorse a
   military mission to combat people-smugglers. Neither the government in
   Tripoli nor the internationally recognized government that fled the
   Libyan capital last summer and is now based in the country's east are
   prepared to give consent.

   In 2014, an estimated 170,000 people crossed the Mediterranean from
   Libya. European officials fear the number this year could climb much
   higher without robust interdiction.

   Altaher Mohammed Makni is a member of the Tripoli government and comes
   from Libya's desert south. He said European countries have money and
   should be helping the migrants' source countries to develop and invest
   in projects in sub-Saharan Africa. That would help to deter migrants
   from leaving, he argued.

   But he did think Libya should establish migrant detention centers in
   the south of the country and not on the coast. Once the migrants reach
   the seashore it was too late, he said.

   But he said one of the biggest challenges was to persuade Libya's
   neighbors to facilitate the deportation of migrants from Libya. "The
   neighboring countries the migrants have passed through must allow us to
   deport them back through the same route but they block this happening,"
   he said.

   Libya is on the verge of bankruptcy after a yearlong civil war and
   standoff between rival governments, and does not have the money to fly
   the thousands of migrants back to their home countries.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/libyans-doubtful-about-europe-plan-to
   -block-people-smugglers/2824566.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/libyans-doubtful-about-europe-plan-to-block-people-smugglers/2824566.html