Nervous Europe watches Libya unravel

The French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a cabinet reshuffle in a rare televised address on Sunday. The content of his speech came as little surprise. He dumped his scandal-prone foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie, who had managed to mess up the job after only three months in office.
Turn the clock back and Ms Alliot-Marie was widely seen as a safe pair of hands – the first woman in France to head up the defence and interior ministries. However, she was criticised for taking a holiday with her parents and her partner in Tunisia while anti-government protests raged. She even offered Ben Ali’s regime “advice” on how to suppress the demonstrations – this a few days before the former Tunisian president took refuge in a villa in Saudi Arabia.

After three months of confusion and hesitation, the French government has decided to get behind the pro-democracy movement in the Arab world. It must have been difficult – France has enjoyed years of close relations with autocrats in the region, particularly those running former French colonies.

This is not a story unique to France – other European countries have done the same thing, offering North African regimes trade and investment deals and bestowing plenty of legitimacy on them in the process. In return, the Europeans got “immigration control” – a promise to hold back the people of Africa (or at least the young and ambitious, clamoring for a piece of the pie).

Colonel Gaddafi‘s regime won billions of dollars of investment from Italy in exchange for a promise to close off transit routes used by African migrants. The two countries signed a “friendship pact” in 2009 which allows the Italian authorities to send migrants directly back to Libya without having to assess individuals’ asylum claims. It was all very convenient – and it worked. With the exception of Greece, EU states have largely stemmed migration from North Africa.

However, European politicians are now worried. President Sarkozy even worked the issue into his “cabinet reshuffle” speech. “Europe is on the front line,” he said adding that he wants an EU summit on the issue. The underlying concern here is self-evident – that tens or even hundreds of thousands of Libyans and other Africans will paddle across the Mediterranean as North African states are consumed by revolts and uprisings.

On the frontline at the moment – the UNHCR – struggling to manage the outflow of people from Libya’s land borders.

The UN has begun to construct an emergency camp for 12,000 on the Tunisian side of the border this evening. A UNHCR official told me that the organisation is deeply concerned that the vast majority of those fleeing the violence are Tunisians and Egyptians (mainly workers). Only 3,000-odd Libyans have chosen to leave I am told. One UN worker told me that Libyan citizens are too frightened to leave their homes with reports of executions by pro-Gaddafi forces proving a powerful incentive to stay put.

If – or should I say when Gaddafi’s “Tripoli regime” falls, the situation will almost certainly change. With food and medicines in desperately short supply, Libyans will not wait around to be fed. Whether the EU is able to organise a comprehensive response, is an all together different question.