Are we ready for a crisis? ‘Yes and No’

On Thursday, Italy’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni sounded the alarm over the possibility of a full-scale humanitarian emergency that may take place right on his (and our) country’s doorstep.

Where Malta’s government officials have studiously avoided such alarmism in public, Maroni bluntly outlined his worst fears at a press conference outside Rome’s Doria Pamphili park: ironically, the same place where Gaddafi had set up his Bedouin-style tent during a recent visit to Italy.

Estimating that as many as 300,000 people, mostly non-Libyan Africans, “could attempt to leave Libya if conditions there worsen”, the Northern League minister turned to Europe and echoed a sentiment long expressed locally: he called for burden sharing.

“We can absorb the impact, yes, but not for the long term, thus the request to the European Union to share this burden with us.”

But Europe’s immediate response has not to date been encouraging. Swedish interior minister Tobias Billstrom was unimpressed with Maroni’s claims, and accused Mediterranean countries – including Malta – of ‘exaggerating’ and overstating the case for European involvement.

“Italy has only received 5,000 immigrants from Tunisia at Lampedusa, and we think that it can cope on its own with this situation,” he said.

Asked whether his country will help Malta and Italy in the case of a Libyan exodus, he adopted a wait-and-see approach.

“With regards to Libya we have not seen any biblical exodus yet, so let’s not be so alarmist,” he said.

Logistical limitations

Admittedly, a full scale refugee crisis of the kind seen in Iraq, Kosovo, Congo and Somalia (among others) has not yet materialised in Libya. But civilian evacuations are already in full swing, and the numbers to date have been considerable.

Government sources on Thursday indirectly suggested that the country’s role as logistical hub for European and international evacuation may have placed the country’s main infrastructural nodes under strain. At the time of writing, some 2,000 Chinese nationals are on their way from Libya on board Maltese vessel ‘Roma’, chartered by China. They are expected to remain in port until aircraft arrive to pick them up. A further 3,000 employees of a Libya-based Brazilian company (including Brazilian, Vietnamese and Thai nationalities) are expected to arrive by catamaran the moment the weather clears. Meanwhile, British, German and American vessels are also ferrying hundreds of passengers from Tripoli and Benghazi.

“This is nothing we can’t handle, but there will obviously be congestion in the harbours and our resources are stretched,” sources close to Foreign Minister Tonio Borg said this week.

In most cases the evacuees will only transit through Malta; but owing to the inevitable confusion as the pace of evacuation intensifies, some could easily find themselves stranded. It remains to be seen where these will be accommodated. Many will no doubt have their expenses paid by the companies which employ them, and the Foreign Ministry indicated on Thursday that temporary accommodation is being considered for the rest. 

Fears of influx

But while Malta has so far taken the evacuation process in its stride, a refugee crisis of the kind envisaged by Maroni would be another matter altogether.

For one thing, Billstrom’s optimism is not exactly shared by the government of Malta. While not commenting directly on the reported spat between Justice Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici and his Swedish counterpart on Wednesday, an interior ministry official who spoke to MaltaToday admitted that a crisis of ‘biblical’ proportions could well be beyond the country’s capabilities.

“Much depends on how things will develop,” a government spokesman said when asked to outline preparations for any crisis that may arise. “There are two basic scenarios we are looking at. If the Libyan government falls within a short space of time, it will be mostly loyalists and mercenaries to flee the country. It is impossible to say how many, but the chances are we will not be looking at very large numbers.”

Even with a low-level influx of this nature, problems of an altogether more sinister nature could arise. Among those fleeing Libya in the event of regime-collapse would almost certainly be a number of military and police officials, among others who would have been involved in repressing the uprising. Their presence in Malta could create unforeseen headaches for local security forces, as fugitives may easily find themselves targeted by retaliatory action… including the possibility of organised death squads.

However, the situation would almost certainly be much more serious in the second scenario: full-blown civil war.

“It is impossible to confirm Maroni’s estimate of 300,000 – he could be right or wrong, we just don’t know,” government sources said. “But whatever the exact figure, it is likely we will be looking at large movements of people over a sustained period.”

In both scenarios, control of Libya’s notoriously porous borders will also evaporate – as indeed it already has – facilitating ease of passage for a number of asylum seekers already understood to be in that country, looking for an opportunity to escape.

Last year, Libya’s ambassador to Malta placed their number at an estimated ‘one million’. Asked specifically if Malta can handle a full-scale humanitarian crisis of this nature, the government’s answer was: “Yes, and no.”

Beyond capacity

As Malta has already experienced with the more familiar immigration patterns in recent years, the bulk of the problem does not concern the influx itself; but rather, the long-term accommodation issue.

Malta’s asylum regime involves a mandatory period of detention of not more than 18 months – though this may well be revised in view of an internationally recognised emergency situation – or until asylum applications are processed.

A fast-tracking procedure may well be adopted in case of record numbers of arrivals, but the logistical problems associated with detention are likely to remain.

Excluding makeshift tents in and outside the compounds themselves, the combined total capacity of Malta’s ‘official’ detention centres at the Safi and Lyster (Hal Far) barracks, as well as Ta’ Kandja and the Floriana depot, does not exceed 2,000.

Include the tents and this can conceivably be doubled – but ironically, even if numbers are comparable to those mentioned by Billstrom himself (i.e., ‘only’ 5,000), they would still be almost double the highest influx of irregular immigrants in 2008 – when the flow irregular migrants reaching Malta was at its peak – and more than three times the amount that arrived in 2005, when former Commander of the Armed Forces Brig. Carmel Vassallo candidly admitted that the army was “close to breaking point.”

Repatriation not an option

Furthermore, measures adopted in the past to mitigate immigration (successfully, if one closes an eye at the unsettling humanitarian implications) can no longer be applied in the present scenario – still less in the event that the Libyan State collapses altogether.

In August 2008, Roberto Maroni had engineered an agreement with Gaddafi’s regime in order to turn back asylum seekers to their point of departure – i.e., Libya – when apprehended at sea. This agreement, which also provided for an injection of some $5 billion into Libya’s economy in reparation for the Italian colonial period – came into force in January 2009, and almost immediately the numbers of incoming asylum seekers fell drastically.

Over the past two years, Malta’s closed detention centres were gradually almost completely depleted. But this only meant that the open centres – especially at Marsa – quickly reached saturation point: a fact which is already troubling officials at the Interior Ministry.

“For obvious reasons, many of the refugees coming out of Libya in the event of civil war will be automatically eligible for asylum, so these will not place undue strain on detention centres,” a ministry official maintained. “But open centres are already full… so where will they all stay?”

Refugees in Malta

Between 1983 and 2001, some 3,100 asylum seekers came to Malta. Figures peaked in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, as well as the first Gulf War in Iraq, which resulted in 927 arrivals.

Of those 3,100 asylum seekers, 2,271 were resettled elsewhere by the Church’s Emigrants’ Commission: Canada (1,050), the USA (700), Australia (400), the UK, Germany, Sweden (six cases), and individuals in Belgium, France, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, and Holland.
In 2002, Malta passed the Refugee Act, and set up its own Refugee Commission. Coincidentally this marked the start of the boat immigration phenomenon, with the first landing taking place at at Paul’s Bay that year.

Since that first boatload, arrivals of irregular migrants fluctuated at just over or below the 1,500 mark per year, with only one year, 2003, having seen a low number of arrivals (502). By 2005 arrivals were back up to 1,822. In 2008, the largest number yet was recorded recorded: 2,775.

Throughout this period the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers came from Africa, and of these again the greatest denomination by far came from Somalia, with significant numbers also from Eritrea, Nigeria, Mali and Sudan.

Following a repatriation agreement between Italy and Libya which came into force early in 2009, numbers began to drastically decline.