The EconomistFebruary 3rd 2018 Europe 47M
OST interior ministers can hope for little more from their job
than to avertdisaster. Managing migration, crime, terro-
rism, policing and prisons is largely a matter of avoiding bear-
traps rather than seeking glory. Jack Straw, who held the job in
Britain for four years, called it “Life in the Graveyard”.
Not, though, for Marco Minniti, Italy’s interiorminister. In the
first half of 2017 a sharp rise in maritime migration from Libya
spooked Europeans, still recovering from the refugee crisis of
2015-16. But crossings fell by 70% after Mr Minniti stepped in. Polls
declared him Italy’s most popular politician. Some even spoke of
him as a potential prime minister.
From his office in Rome, Mr Minniti sets out the steps of his
strategy. First, last February, came a deal between Italy and Lib-
ya’sUN-backed government, which the EUquickly supported.
Then, in April, Mr Minniti brokered an agreement between war-
ring tribal leaders from Libya’s sparsely populated south, through
which African migrants heading to the coast travel from Niger.
The breakthrough came in July, when he convened a meeting of
14 Libyan mayors in Tripoli. “Agree to separate your city’s destiny
from human smuggling, and we’ll create a different future,” he
told them. Smugglers in coastal cities like Sabratha were told (and
perhaps paid, although Italy denies funding criminals) to find
other things to do. Meanwhile the Italians and the EU trained Lib-
ya’s coastguard to pull back migrants fleeing for Europe. The num-
bers, and deaths at sea, dropped precipitously. International orga-
nisations, like the UN’s refugee agency, now have space to
function in Libya, Mr Minniti proudly notes.
Mr Minniti, who once oversaw Italy’s intelligence services,
cultivates the reputation of a spymaster with mysterious contacts
in every corner. But he also has a strategist’s mind. Sounding
more like a foreign than an interior minister, dropping the names
of philosophers and classical authors as he goes, he offers a vi-
sion of the intertwined destinies of Europe and Africa, based on
security, demography and economics. His knowledge of the
complex tapestry of militias, tribes, terrorists and competing
power centres of Libya, to which he has been travelling for two
decades, is “second to none”, says one EUofficial. Mr Minniti has
suggested that his upbringing in Calabria, Italy’s toe, a baroque
world of organised crime and political violence, may have givenhim a head-start in understanding Italy’s southern neighbour.
Once a card-carrying communist, MrMinniti reinvented him-
self as a centre-left pragmatist. Today his security-first approach
to migration irksother Italian ministers who hew to what an EU
official calls “the moralistic school of policy”. Some ex-col-
leagues, such as Massimo D’Alema, Mr Minniti’s mentor and a
former prime minister, have disowned him; NGOs hate him. But
voters are fans. Mr Minniti was a “far-sighted interpreter of fast-
changing Italian attitudes”, says Giampiero Massolo, a former in-
telligence head who worked with him. “He did things that would
have been unthinkable for the left a few yearsago.”
For many on the European left they remain so. But Mr Minniti
suggests that is a sign of his comrades’ struggle to understand the
politics of fear. “The left must stand beside those with fears in or-
der to free them,” he says. “Populists do so to chain them.” Yet his
critics claim thatMr Minniti is responsible for stoking rather than
quelling those anxieties. However popular, his actions have
hardly seen off the threat from anti-immigrant populists, as Italy’s
election on March 4th will demonstrate.
Other worries centre on the conditions of detained migrants
in Libya. Many are picked up and returned to shore by the coast-
guard, which Mr Minniti says conducted 22,000 search-and-res-
cue-operations last year. But5,000 migrants moulderthere in
overcrowded official detention centres staffed by corrupt guards
with a fondness for torture and sexual violence. The unofficial
centres are doubtless worse, and no one knows how many they
hold. Médecins Sans Frontières, an NGO, calls the system “rotten
to the core”, and says Europe is complicit. “The problem is an old
one,” says Mr Minniti. “The difference is that the UN[and other
organisations] are now present.”
Then there is the murky role of Libya’s militias, which run the
smuggling networks. Mr Minniti saysthat combating smuggling
shores up Libya’s weak institutions. But Mark Micallef from the
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, a
watchdog, says Italy may have fuelled instability in Sabratha and
elsewhere by providing the militias with fresh ways to make
money, and opportunities to launder their reputations. Aiding
militias, even indirectly, does not foster stability in Libya, he says.The road to Tripoli
Many observers seem unsure about Mr Minniti, praising his
knowledge and competence—traits not abundant in Italian poli-
tics—while fearing a lack of follow-through. “I adored him,” says
Maria Nicoletta Gaida, who as head of an NGO, Ara Pacis, helped
him broker the deal in the south last year. But she and others say
that the projects the tribal leaders were promised as alternatives
to smuggling have not materialised. Others worry that the minis-
ter sees Libya only through the “dirty lens” of intelligence.
Libya’s instability makes it hard to bet that Mr Minniti’s deals
will stick. Migrant crossings have started to creep up again, amid a
fresh surge in fighting. In the long term, Mr Minniti says, he has
created space for Europe to do more for Africa. But the EU’s ambi-
tious plans in countries like Niger have already been hampered
by dozy bureaucracies and Brussels turf wars.
Still, Mr Minniti has shown that governments need not be
helpless bystanders when neighbours are unstable. His own
days in office may be numbered—although his popularity could
inoculate him against dismissal, even with a change of govern-
ment. Either way, if the rest of Europe genuinely cares about Lib-
ya, it should walk through the door he has opened. 7The Minniti method
Italy’s interior ministerthinks the left should have an answer to illegal migrationCharlemagne