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The focus of Natos conference in Brussels, the first since Donald Trump got to the White House, was on the message he sent to an organisation of Western allies he had called obsolete while speaking of his admiration for Vladimir Putin.

The message, a veiled threat, conveyed by US defence secretary James Mattis, was that the continuing failure of the alliance to pay its share on security would lead to the US reevaluating its commitment to the defence of Europe. That and the continuing fallout over Trumpnational security adviserMichael Flynns departure after clandestine contacts with the Russians, were the sources of fascination and foreboding here.

Almost unnoticeda development took place at the end of the summit, on Libya, which is likely to have great resonance in relations between Nato, the US and Russia, Trump and Putin. Natos secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, announced that the alliance is likely to provide security support to the Libyan government of Fayez al-Sarraj.

One month of Donald Trump as President of the United States

We have said for some time that we are ready to help Libyabut that any assistance has to be based on a request from the Libyan government, said Stoltenberg.This is the request we received yesterday training local forces is one of the best weapons in the fight against terrorism and building stability.

Libya has, of course, become a source of huge trouble for Europe since David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy instigated Natos military intervention and the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi six years ago. It is the main conduit for hundreds of thousands of refugees crossing the Mediterranean and also the lawless place where Isis has established its main base for carrying out attacks in the Maghreb.

Special forces of Western countries are already in action in Libya the US has carried out airstrikes on Isis and other Islamist terrorists. But any formal deployment of forces by Nato faces problems. There is the danger of mission creep:being sucked into a violent and semi-anarchic quagmire, as well as the fact that the Government of National Accord, headed by Fayez al-Sarraj, whichNato is supposed to prop up, has very little territory and very little power.

The man who claims to wield real power an aspiring new Gaddafi according to his enemies is former general Khalifa Haftar with his forcetheLibyan National Army (LNA).He has the backing ofEgypt and the UAEwhose warplanes have carried out airstrikes in his support. Now, crucially,he has thesupport of a Russia expandingits influence across the Middle-East and North Africa.

General Haftar went to Moscow twice last year to seek help and then turned up on board the aircraft carrierAdmiral Kuznetsovas it was returning from waters off the coast of Syria where it had been part of theblitzkrieg enabling Bashar al-Assad to recapture Aleppo. He met the Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu, on board, to discuss, according to the Kremlin, fighting international terrorist groups in the Middle East.

The USunder Barack Obamahad refused to deal with General Haftarbut the Libyan commander and his backers, the parliament in Benghazi, one of the countrys three governments, say they are also now optimistic that they will get the support of the Trump administration.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was the first foreign leader to congratulate Trump after his victory and the Egyptian president has been pressing Washington to switch its support to General Haftar. And, according to reports, members of the Trump team have started discussing the Haftar option. An American official in Brussels commented:The Trump people may well think Libya would be a less sensitive theatre to cooperate with the Russians on counter-terrorism than Syria: the common conception is that Libya is a mess we have Daesh[Isis]running around there and if this guy Haftar is being effective, then maybe he is the man.

Even before the coming of Trump there has been a feeling among some American officials that the problems being faced by Europe from Libya were, to an extent, self-induced. Paris and London were very much the cheerleaders in getting rid of Colonel Gaddafi, with Washington somewhat dubious about the outcome.The military mission was initially French and British led, but the Americans had to step in as shortfalls in equipment and bombs and missiles became apparent. In his speech to Nato at the end of the conflict, US defence secretary Leon Panetta warned that legitimate questions about whether, if present trends continue, Nato will again be able to sustain the kind of operations we have seen in Libya without the UStaking on even more of the burden.

The trends that Panetta was talking about was most of Nato not paying their way for the defence of the alliance. American officials pointed out that Mattis was having to make the same point again, much more forcefully, this week, six years later.

The issue of money is not something bothering General Haftar at the moment. Russia hasprinted 4bn Libyan Dinars (around $2.8bn) on contract to the Libyan Central Bank which it hastransferred it to his backers in Benghazi. Haftarnow claims that Moscow will enable him to spend the money legitimately by helping to lift the UN arms embargo in place since 2011. Thisallows only the UN-backed GNC administration in Tripoli to bring in weapons with the approval of the UN Security Council Committee.

General Haftar does not lack weapons:a steady,illicitflow comes from the Arab states backing himand his LNA is undoubtedly the most effective non-Islamist force in the country at present. Nato and the EUhad been trying to get the generalto come to an agreement with al-SarrajsGeneral National Council, namely that he retainsmilitary commandwhileacceptingthe civilian administration. Boris Johnson wished earlier this month that Gen Haftar can be persuaded that he can be a big part of the future of Libya but without necessarily having to be a new jefe.

But efforts to this end have been fruitless with General Haftar increasingly empowered by the backing of his international friends. Italian foreign minister Angeleno Afano was due to ask for help on the issue from Sergey Lavrov at a meeting of foreign ministers in Bonn yesterday. But news from there was dominated by the first meeting between Russias foreign minister and Rex Tillerson, Trumps new secretary of state.

It looks increasingly likely that what happens in Libya, as in so much else in the tide of current geopolitics, is likely to be decided by how relations evolve between Trump and Putin;the forming of the new order, with other international players increasingly on the sideline.

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Libya, not Syria, will be the foundation on which Trump and Putin build their new world order - The Independent

Rome - The fleet of privately-run aid vessels rescuing migrants off the Libyan coast and bringing them to Italy is "of interest" to Italian investigators, a Sicilian prosecutor told AFP on Friday.

Catania prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro said the boats were not currently suspected of illegal activity but had drawn attention for their sophisticated and expensive operations.

"There is no investigation in progress, for the simple reason that we do not have information any crimes have been committed," the prosecutor said, refuting Italian media reports saying a probe had been opened.

But the working group set up in the Sicilian city in 2013 to look into migrant trafficking added the aid flotilla - boats run by non-profit organizations (NGOs) - to its list of parties of interest last year.

"There is an abnormal proliferation of NGOs operating. I'm not talking about the big, prestigious organisations, but all the small ones that seem to have sophisticated hardware, such as drones," Zuccaro said.

"That's expensive, and we're just looking into who is financing them and why," he added.

The Maltese organisation Moas was the first to launch a private rescue vessel in the summer of 2014.

By last summer close to ten different NGOs, financed mainly through private donations, were taking part in migrant relief operations off Libya.

Those with one or more boats in the area in 2016 included German NGOs Sea Watch, Sea Eye and Jugend Rettet, as well as the Dutch Lifeboat Project, the Spanish Proactiva Open Arms and Moas.

Most of their boats are in currently docked at port for the winter, but the Aquarius - charted by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) - rescued hundreds of people earlier this month, along with the Golfo Azzuro, run by Proactiva Open Arms.

In a report cited in December by the Financial Times daily, the EU's border control agency Frontex raised the possibility traffickers putting migrants out to sea could be in collusion with the private ships that recover them and bring them to Italy "like taxis".

The allegation was slammed by MSF as "extremely serious and harmful". It said the NGOs were "not the cause but a response" to a humanitarian crisis, and had been forced to act because Frontex was failing to prevent migrant deaths at sea.

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Italy probes private migrant aid vessels off Libya - News24

Crossing the Mediterranean is dangerous, but so is war-torn Libya.

EU leaders have agreed to a plan that will provide Libyas UN-backed government 200 million for dealing with migration. This includes an increase in funding for the Libyan coastguard, with an overall aim to stop migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean to Italy.

Based on the perceived policy success of the 2016 EU-Turkey deal on stopping migrant boats reaching Greece from the west coast of Turkey, known as the eastern Mediterranean route, this deal is intended to have a similar effect on the central Mediterranean in 2017.

Following the EU-Turkey deal, the central Mediterranean became the main route to Europe with over 200,000 arrivals in Italy.

It should go without saying that Libya is an unsafe country. Most western states impose a travel ban on Libya, which is torn apart by civil war, and has not had an effective central government since 2011.

In December last year, a UN report stated:

The situation of migrants in Libya is a human rights crisis. The breakdown in the justice system has led to a state of impunity, in which armed groups, criminal gangs, smugglers and traffickers control the flow of migrants through the country.

The UN-backed government has tenuous control over the eastern region of the country. It is thought that up to 2,000 militias are active in Libya and currently rule the coastline. This includes Islamic State and several other jihadist and non-jihadist groups.

The situation in Libya is quite different from Turkey which, despite concerns about crackdowns on dissent following the attempted coup in 2016, has a relatively stable government under President Recep Tayyip Erdoan.

There are two fundamental differences between Libya and Turkey, when it comes to returning migrants.

First is the right to asylum. In Turkey, certain Syrian refugees have the right to apply for humanitarian protection to the Turkish government. The UNs refugee agency is active within the country, meaning migrants can apply for refugee status there from any country of origin.

While Libya is a signatory to the Geneva Convention on Refugees, there is no asylum process for migrants to apply for asylum either to the government nor to UN. How can asylum and refugee rights be protected in Libya when theres no ability to seek asylum there in the first place?

Second is the safety of migrants. It is frequently argued that stopping the boats will save migrants lives; 5,083 people died crossing the Mediterranean in 2016 across all routes. But we have no way of knowing how many die before they reach the Mediterranean.

In Libya, we have no official data on migrant deaths. A recent report released by the German Embassy in Niger reports that migrants have been executed at prisons run by smugglers. According to the reports authors: Witnesses spoke of five executions a week in one prison.

Research conducted as part of the MEDMIG project found that 29% of respondents reported that they had witnessed the death of fellow travellers on their journey. The majority of these episodes occurred in Algeria, Niger and Libya, not while crossing the Mediterranean.

I have found similar findings in my current research. For the past month, I have been in Sicily interviewing migrants who recently arrived from Africa. I have looked in the eyes of young men as they tremble telling me about their experiences in Libya. For them, the nightmare is not the sea, the nightmare is Libya.

One man told me that he lived in Libya with his family when ISIL invaded and took over the region. He watched as ISIL soldiers shot his four year old daughter in Libya. Leaving Libya became an emergency and his family fled northward across the Mediterranean.

Without any way to track migrant deaths in Libya and other African transit countries such as Algeria or Niger it is not possible to know the number of migrant deaths in these countries. Some work has been done on this by the IOM missing migrants project that reports on en route deaths in Africa, but the numbers are thought to be gross underestimates.

The known levels of abuse and suffering of migrants in Libya suggest that it is possible that the numbers of migrant deaths are similar or possibly even higher, than the number of reported deaths in crossing the Mediterranean.

Beyond the risk of death, migrants face abuse, torture, labour exploitation, arbitrary detention, starvation, and sexual violence. In some cases, migrants do not choose to cross the sea to Italy, but are put on boats at gunpoint by captors who no longer want their labour or service. In other cases, migrants may be trafficked from Libya to Italy.

There are alternative ways that the EU could manage this large movement of people. One suggestion, put forward by the European Stability Initiative, calls for processing claims much faster in Italy by all EU member states, efficiently relocating accepted refugees across Europe, and quickly returning those whose claims are unsuccessful.

You may agree or disagree with this plan, but the point is that there are alternatives that could be more effective than forcing people to stay in Libya. These alternatives require further cooperation from a fragmented EU.

Forcing migrants to stay in Libya is not the same as forcing migrants to stay in Turkey. From the perspective of reducing migrant flows, it is clear that the EU-Turkey deal has been success with a reduction of migrants from 57,066 in February to 1,552 in May 2016.

Little is known about the consequences of the EU-Turkey deal on the migrants and refugees that remain in Turkey. My research from 2015 has indicated that the majority of migrants and refugees want to migrate onwards from Turkey for valid reasons, such as poor living conditions, unemployment, and the desire for safety and security.

Although these are valid concerns, they are not on the same scale of fear of execution, forced labour, or torture experienced by migrants in Libya.

A key policy argument for keeping migrants in Libya is that it will protect them from falling into the hands of people smugglers.

But there is ample evidence that attempts to prevent human smuggling do not protect migrants. In my interviews, respondents most feared militia groups that kept them hostage, not migrant smugglers.

Without effective control of militia groups in Libya and a functioning asylum and judicial system protection for migrants is questionable.

It is clear that a solution is needed to assist Italy in bearing the burden of the large number of migrants arriving on its shores. Keeping migrants in Libya does not protect rights, save lives, nor humanely address this large-scale movement of people.

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Libya is not Turkey: why the EU plan to stop Mediterranean migration is a human rights concern - The Conversation AU

STRATFOR

Holding Up the Peace Process in Libya STRATFOR The latest attempt to bring Libya's rival governments together has failed. Since December 2015, when the Libyan Political Agreement was signed to unify the rival House of Representatives and General National Congress behind a unity government known as ...

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Holding Up the Peace Process in Libya - STRATFOR

africanews

Libya: 170 Senegalese migrants repatriated | Africanews africanews After the wave of Nigerians this week, 170 Senegalese migrants who were in detention centres in Tripoli have been sent back to their country. Some 170 Senegalese migrants in Libya deported by air - Xinhua ...Xinhua all 2 news articles »

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Libya: 170 Senegalese migrants repatriated | Africanews - africanews