Libya cannot be abandoned

Even without the apparent near-total loss of border control, there is mounting evidence that the democratically elected Libyan government is struggling to rein in the heavily armed militia which now clearly overrun the country. Last week's dramatic abduction of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from the Malta-owned Corinthia Bab Africa Hotel in Tripoli spoke volumes about the current state of semi-lawlessness that now characterises our closest neighbor to the south.

The abduction itself has been described as an act of retaliation, after Zeidan's government allowed the United States to capture top al-Qaeda suspect Abu Anas al-Liby in Tripoli. This exposes certain previously invisible political fault lines that now characterise post-civil war Libya: the presence of groups associated with international terrorism; the mass availability of weapons as a result of the indiscriminate arming of anti-Gaddafi militias; as well as the ability and willingness of private armies to strike at the very heart of the government.

Add to this the existence of endemic tribal divisions that existed long before the fall of Gaddafi - indeed they predate the emergence of Libya as a country - and the picture is one of a fragile, fledgling and, above all, unstable democracy, in which the root causes of the January 2011 uprising are very far from resolved.

Needless to say, all this has weighty implications for Malta. Even before Zeidan's abduction, there were rumours that the Libyan government was not in control of large parts of the country - including, it would seem, its all-important oil reserves. The situation in the east of the country, where the 2011 uprising originated, is understood to be volatile in the extreme, with calls for secession and an open refusal to recognise the legitimacy of the present government.

This is cause for grave concern. Malta's investments in Libya are considerable - the Corinthia being the most conspicuous, though there are many more - but apart from investments of a purely financial or commercial nature, there are also much deeper bonds linking the two countries.

For reasons of geography alone, Malta has always been to an extent dependent on the situation in Libya for its own internal peace and stability. At various points in our twin histories, this dependency was reinforced by political connections. Tripoli and Malta were once enclaves simultaneously controlled by the Knights of St John. Much closer to our time, Malta served as a 'bridge' between Libya and the rest of the world during 10 years of sanctions occasioned by the Lockerbie bombing of 1989.

Earlier still, the Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici administrations concretised the image of a 'blood brotherhood' between the two countries: it reached questionable proportions when Mifsud Bonnici took the initiative to inform Gaddafi of incoming British and American bombers in April 1986, at the height of the Cold War.

But while many at the time questioned the wisdom of a foreign policy which risked directly embroiling Malta in military engagements, no one in his right mind today would doubt the need to bolster relations with Libya - if not for the undeniable fact that sizeable Maltese investments are now inextricably linked to the fate of the present interim government, at least for the sake of peace and stability in the central Mediterranean region.

From this perspective, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat clearly did the right thing with his lightning visit to Al Zeidan in a show of support so soon after his release. The significance of the initiative goes well beyond a mere show of goodwill: Zeidan also needs international recognition to boost the perception of his government as the sole legitimate interlocutor on behalf of the Libyan people.

Having said this, Malta's ability to provide such recognition is clearly limited. Besides, Libya also needs reassurance that it will not be abandoned to an uncertain future of anarchy and chaos - and no amount of state visits by a Maltese prime minister can ever realistically achieve this.

Yet strangely, such international support - so forthcoming while the uprising was in full swing - has been withheld in the post-Gaddafi scenario. It seems that the Western powers that weighed in so heavily in support of the rebels two years ago (and, in so doing, armed many of the groups that now threaten the country's stability) are simply no longer interested in the fate of a Libyan people they once rushed in to rescue.

The implications are deeply worrying. Malta will inevitably be the first to taste the consequences of a collapse in the Zeidan regime; but the rest of Europe cannot rest comfortably with a festering trouble spot on its own doorstep, either.

As Italy's former prime minister Aldo Moro put it in 1975, "There can be no peace in Europe if there is no peace in the Mediterranean region". And with Malta having already offered what little support it can, it is now up to the international community to also do its bit for Libya.