Boris: Libya’s on terror front line

BORIS Johnson yesterday warned that Libya’s migrant crisis could see it become a hotbed for terrorists and people smugglers.

During a visit to Tripoli, the Foreign Secretary said the country is the ‘front line for many challenges which left unchecked can pose problems for us in the UK’.

He said the UK is determined to stop Libya from ‘becoming a fertile ground for terrorists, gun runners and people traffickers in close proximity to Europe’. Libyan Prime minister Faiez Serraj asked for cash to deal with the huge number of arrivals.

THERE is a new narrative, much encouraged by intransigent Remainers, that everything is suddenly going swimmingly in the EU. Its member states are said to be booming while the British economy is supposedly stuttering.

The often blinkered European political class appears also to believe that, with the election of the centrist President Emmanuel Macron in France, the forces of populism have miraculously receded.

Talk of an economic revival in the EU, needless to say, is somewhat exaggerated. There has only been flickering evidence of growth in France and Italy, and it may soon be extinguished by a rising — and overvalued — euro which makes their exports increasingly uncompetitive.

But even more misguided is the notion that populism is extinct. The factors which helped feed it — uncontrolled immigration from outside Europe, and the justified fear of terrorism that accompanies it — remain strong.

Unvetted

Just listen to Faiez Sarraj, head of the government in the failed state of Libya. He has told The Times newspaper that Europe will increasingly be at risk from terrorists posing as migrants unless EU leaders help his country to stem the numbers crossing the Mediterranean.

There are an estimated 700,000 migrants in Libya hoping to come to Europe. According to Mr Sarraj, would-be terrorists are able to pass unvetted into Libya. A large proportion then enter Europe, particularly Italy. This year a record 98,000 migrants have already arrived in that country.

Don’t forget, by the way, that seven out of ten of these migrants were recently judged by the United Nations — hardly an anti-immigrant organisation — to be ‘economic’. In other words, the majority aren’t fleeing terror or persecution.

To return to the Libyan leader. This is what he says: ‘When migrants reach Europe, they will move freely. If, God forbid, there are terrorist elements among the migrants, a result of any incident will affect all of the EU.’

His comments follow last week’s outrages in Spain, which left 15 people dead. A Moroccan-led cell is thought to have been responsible. Six of the 12 terrorists involved in the attacks are believed to have come from Morocco.

This year has seen an increasing stream of migrants crossing the Strait of Gibraltar between Morocco and Spain, which at its narrowest point is less than ten miles wide. In a single week in June, more than 1,000 migrants arrived illegally on the Andalusian coast.

Admittedly there are fewer migrants waiting in Morocco to go to Spain than there are in Libya with an eye on Italy, but as a proportion of the whole there may be more terrorists.

Up to 1,000 jihadists are thought to have been smuggled back to Morocco and Tunisia from the battlefields of Islamic State’s crumbling caliphate, of whom some 300 are said to be kicking their heels in Morocco.

One way and another, this is a serious state of affairs. Even if only one among — what? — 1,000 migrants is a prospective terrorist, that would imply a significant number of very dangerous people wanting to enter Europe, and doubtless often succeeding.

You’d think EU leaders would be in state of panic, but they’re not. A chilling insight into Brussels’ prevailing complacency was provided by Javier Solana, a former EU Foreign Affairs chief, on Radio Four’s Today programme yesterday.

Mr Solana suggested that the terrorists responsible for the Spanish attacks were well integrated, played football, spoke Spanish and had good jobs. In his mind, the rogue of the story was a recently arrived extremist imam, who corrupted young minds.

Can it really be as simple as that? I’d say there was a much bigger challenge: regulating and screening the influx of migrants who are entering Italy, Spain and other EU countries illegally, sometimes without even being interrogated by an official.

And, of course, there would be a huge problem even if there wasn’t a single terrorist among these waves of mostly ‘economic’ migrants. Some 600,000 have landed in Italy since 2014, which according to its Left-of-Centre interior minister, Marco Minniti, is pushing the country to the limits of its tolerance.

The fact is that, although EU leaders claim they want to help — President Macron arrived in office in May promising to support Italy — nothing has been done.

Two months after Macron’s fraternal pledge, France closed its borders to migrants from Italy. Austria has done the same, and plans to send troops to police its border with Italy. That’s not to say some unchecked migrants are not sneaking northwards in the back of lorries, and potentially towards our shores.

Resentment

Meanwhile Italy, whose economy is sclerotic, is boiling with rage and resentment as it struggles with hundreds of thousands of migrants without help from its neighbours. Unsurprisingly, populist parties have been thriving.

The anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which has increasingly cast itself as antimigrant, is vying with the ruling Democratic Party in the polls. The even more explicitly anti- migrant, far- Right Northern League has been gaining support.

Perhaps Brussels is so certain that populism has abated that it has failed to remember the Five Star Movement is antieuro and Eurosceptic, as is the Northern League. An alliance between the two is increasingly on the cards after a General Election which must take place before the end of next May.

Only a fool would rule out the possibility that there may be an upset in Italy next year, largely caused by the migrant crisis so blithely ignored by Brussels, which could lead to the country leaving the euro and, not inconceivably, the EU.

That would make Brexit look like a genteel tea party, and take the smile off the faces of the insufferably arrogant JeanClaude Juncker and Michel Barnier, who are so eager to rub British noses in the dirt.

Of course it may well not happen. But even if it doesn’t, there are bound to be further upheavals if EU leaders do nothing about the invasion of uncounted migrants, and continue to fail to appreciate the danger that terrorists may exploit Europe’s porous southern border.

Failure

What could Brussels do? For one thing it could lend its weight to the setting up of camps in Libya, where the claims of migrants would be carefully processed. Libya’s leader — shades of Donald Trump — is even asking for European help in building an electric fence along his country’s southern border.

My bet is the EU will do very little. The main reason is that the unelected Commission is so very far removed from people’s experience of uncontrolled immigration, and doesn’t really care — as its failure to assist Italy eloquently shows.

Moreover, Europe’s most powerful politician, Angela Merkel — who will probably be re - elected as German Chancellor next month — still does not appear to grasp fully her historic mistake in encouraging nearly a million migrants to enter Germany in 2015.

I’m not going to predict the disintegration of the EU. That would be silly and rash. But it seems to me that an institution championed by a political class with such a tin ear for the fears and experiences of ordinary people is unlikely to last for ever.

Europe is in denial about uncontrolled immigration and the associated risks of terrorism. Which is another reason for blessing our good fortune that, in less than two years, we will be wresting back control of our own borders.