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ENGLAND'S Muslim population has smashed the three million mark in 2019.

Some parts of London are now almost 50 per cent Islamic, according to analysis from the Office for National Statistics.

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If current trends continue the areas could become majority Muslim within ten years.

Official ONS figures for 2018/19 that were released in December show that there are 3,194,791 Muslims living in England, with over a third aged under 16.

English Muslims make up the vast majority of the 3,363,210 currently living in England, Scotland and Wales. They make up 5.9 per cent of the 2018 English population (55.16 million).

2018 figures show that London was home to nearly 1.26 million Muslims, making up 14.2 per cent of the capital's population. 74 per cent of Londoners are listed as Christian or a-religious.

Following the migrant crisis that started in 2015, there were reports thatIslamic populations would triple by 2050as refugees headed west.

However the Islamic community in England is relatively low compared to other religions.

Christianity (all denominations) is still the most popular religion in England by a long shot, with 27.9 million people identifying with the church. 21.5 million of us don't identify with any religion at all.

The overall English population sampled by the 2019 ONS survey was 55,318,085. There were 63,783,693 Brits surveyed in all.

The Muslim Council of Britain has been approached for comment.

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Originally posted here:
Muslim population of England smashes three million mark for first time ever, figures reveal - The Sun

The murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia (Malta, 2017)

Daphne Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist, was murdered in 2017 and two years on the scandal has seen three senior cabinet ministers stand down and the countrys prime minister, Joseph Muscat, promise to quit in January 2020.

Three men are currently awaiting trial for the 53-year-olds murder, but the authorities have not tracked down who hired them. Muscats chief of staff, Keith Schembri, resigned after he was arrested by police over the killing. He has denied any knowledge of or links with the murder.

Herman Grech, the editor of the Times of Malta, told Euronews the case had presented many lessons that Europe now needed to learn, from the importance of independent media - which has led the breakthrough, he said - to the importance of keeping an eye on the institutions of all countries, even the microscopic ones.

From a social perspective it reflected the way the masses turned a blind eye to cronyism and corruption as it fed off the altar of greed, he said.

Brexit has cost two prime ministers their jobs, led to two elections in as many years and dominated British politics since a small majority of Britons voted to leave the European Union on 23 June 2016.

But while pundits at the time saw Brexit as the beginning of the end of the EU with calls for a French Frexit, a Dutch Nexit, and so on the opposite has in fact proved true, Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University, London, told Euronews.

Brexit has actually made some Europeans, who'd maybe forgotten quite how important the EU was to them, realise its value, Bale says.

Poll after poll now suggest that fewer and fewer European Union citizens nowadays show any serious enthusiasm for the idea that their country should follow the UK out of the EU.

When 195 countries signed the Paris Agreement on December 12, 2015, they made a promise to try and reduce the risks and impact of climate change. To do so, they volunteered to curtail their carbon emissions and work towards preventing a global average temperature increase of more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. The consequence of breaking said promise: none.

The good news: climate policy EU-wide and within member states has actually changed, Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute Prof Dr Richard J.T. Klein told Euronews. On top of that, he predicts the European Green Deal will transform many economic sectors that create greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite the US withdrawal from the agreement, European countries are determined to stay committed. According to Klein, the deal will likely mark an important point in changing the narrative in Europe. Maybe we won't so much pinpoint the Paris Agreement per se, but we'll recognise the value of the policies and measures that the EU and its member states are and will be implementing in response to the agreement, he adds.

Even though both the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal are the right steps in the right direction, Klein also urges that societies will need to increase their efforts to prepare for the impacts of climate change, which is equally urgent as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the European Green Deal remains silent about this part of climate policy.

The #Metoo movement went global after sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein became public in October 2017.

As European Ombudsman Emily OReilly told Euronews: "The #MeToo movement was all about empowerment. It allowed women in Europe and elsewhere to speak up about their experiences of sexual harassment and know that the culture of silence and denial that previously existed was crumbling."

It didnt take long for the movement to become big in Europe. More than seven million women are estimated to have protested in womens marches worldwide since then. But the impact hasnt been the same everywhere.

Some countries, such as France, Spain and Italy, came up with their own version of the Metoo hashtag, such as #BalanceTonPorc in France and #Cuntalo in Spain.

In the UK, defence secretary Michael Fallon resigned amid allegations of inappropriate behaviour. Meanwhile, the effect in some Balkan and Eastern European countries, as well as in Germany, has been limited in comparison.

All in all, OReilly says the biggest change was public awareness. It also showed why it is so important to have women in positions of power, she added. For the first time we now have female presidents of both the European Commission and the European Central Bank this is a strong positive message for younger generations of women."

When Ukraine announced in February 2014 that little green men had started seizing facilities in Crimea, Vladimir Putin denied that the soldiers which were carrying Russian weapons and wearing Russian military garb were Russian. In April, he admitted that they were.

By then, a referendum had been held in occupied Crimea on March 16, with the dubious result of 97% voting to join Russia. The U.N. voted 100-11 to condemn the move, while the European Union applied sanctions. But five years on, Crimea remains in Russian hands.

Read more: EU to consider increasing sanctions on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine

The annexation may have been eclipsed by the war in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists, which has raged since April 2014, but still poses a fundamental challenge to the European order, according to Steven Pifer, at Brookings.

Although Putin has held back from occupying the Donbas region, the annexation of Crimea has alarmed European former Soviet republics such as Lithuania and Estonia and reflects a greater polarisation in Europe, with the EU on one side and Putins Russia on the other.

While refugees and migrants have always attempted the sea crossing between Turkey and Greece and Libya and Italy in an attempt to reach Europe, during the first three months of 2015 the number of drownings in the Mediterranean rose to 1,687 from 60 a year earlier.

In April, an estimated 800 people were killed in a single shipwreck and the EU voted to expand its multinational sea rescue operation, Triton. Meanwhile, hundreds of boats crossed the Mediterranean, while refugees many of them fleeing from the increasingly brutal war in Syria walked towards northern Europe in their thousands.

Read more: How the English Channel became a new frontier of the migrant crisis

Since 2016, crossings have fallen sharply, but a byproduct of the refugee crisis has been a surge in support for far-right parties in Europe, with leaders from Hungarys Viktor Orban to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), to Italys Lega and Britains Brexit Party making opposition to migration a key electoral issue.

In 2019, the refusal to allow boats to dock and legal actions against NGOs carrying out rescues along with agreements with countries like Libya and Turkey to prevent migrants from leaving for Europe have had mixed results. Meanwhile, the deadly crossings continue.

In November 2013, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych announced that Ukraine would not sign an association agreement with the European Union. Within a week, one million Ukrainians had taken to the streets, and in February after months of protests Yanukovych fled to Russia.

2014 saw the Russian annexation of Crime and the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine, and five years on Crimea remains in Russian hands and the conflict continues in the Donbas between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces and militias.

Given that, many feel that the successes of the Maidan protests - named after the square in which they began in Kyiv - were few and far between. But they demonstrated to Europe that popular desire from Ukrainians to have a closer relationship with Europe - the protests in Maidan began under European Union flags - at a time when enlargement is a key issue for the EU.

Catalonias struggle for independence from Spain has exacerbated in the past decade. After a non-binding independence referendum in defiance of Spains constitutional court on 1 October 2017, nine of the twelve accused independence movement leaders received prison sentences for the crimes of sedition in October 2019. In the wake of the referendum, protests erupted all across Catalonia.

Kristian Herbolzheim, director of the International Catalan Institute for Peace (ICIP) told Euronews that Catalonias quest for independence poses a major challenge" to the EU on several fronts.

"At a political level, it is disturbing that one of the most important member states seems unable to address the conflict through political means. This creates a paradox, as the EU likes to profile itself as an institution that is happy to facilitate dialogue between conflicting parties internationally, but is reluctant to get involved in affairs that are considered internal to the member states.

On top of that, Spain is blocking Kosovos access to the EU on the grounds of not setting a precedent for regions such as Catalonia. This may also have implications if Scotland has a new referendum leading to independence.

All in all the conflict is calling to revisit the concepts of sovereignty and democracy within the EU in the 21st Century. Both those in favour and against Catalan independence are largely pro-EU. This should incentivise the EU to find a creative way of playing some sort of constructive role, Herbholzheim added.

After lengthy negotiations, Iran agreed to a deal for its nuclear programme with the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany in 2015. Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities and regular inspections by international experts in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Not only did the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, provide Europe with a relatively high degree of certainty that Iran could not pursue a military option with its nuclear programme, but it also allowed European countries to pursue business interests once again with Iran which is of economic benefit to them, Xanthe Hall, co-director of the German affiliate of the Nobel Peace Prize winning organisation International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) told Euronews.

Read more:

France considering mechanism in Iran nuclear deal to enact UN sanctions

Iran begins injecting uranium gas into Fordow centrifuges why is this important?

In 2017 US President Donald Trump announced the US would abandon the deal and re-impose sanctions. As a consequence, the remaining partners came up with a way to bypass the US dollar and introduced a financial system of trade with Iran (INSTEX).

The US decision to leave the deal is one of the more significant wedges in US-EU relations Narges Bajoghli, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University told Euronews.

Within Iran, the deal has solidified the narrative among more conservative political forces that the US cannot be a trusted international partner. It has also demonstrated to Iran that the EU cannot exert actual power vis-a-vis the US, even to protect agreements it adheres to. Overall, the fall-out of the deal after the US withdrawal will most likely be looked back upon as a time that led to increased tensions in the Middle East to the detriment of manyat the request of a few Bajoghli added.

European countries have been a primary target for terrorist attacks in the last decade. With the defeat of Al Qaeda and so-called Islamic State, there have been more attacks carried out by solo actors who affiliate themselves with certain radical groups who are Islamist, white-supremacist or separatist.

"The main change has been the rise of the inspired attack; an attack that is not the sophisticated result of extensive planning and central coordination, but rather one executed by an individual who has had little contact with the organisation that he or she claims to support, using everyday tools such as a knife or a truck," Richard Barrett of the Global Strategy Network told Euronews.

"The perception of marginalisation and the speed of radicalisation to violence are both by-products of the exponential rise in the use of social media and the ability of terrorist groups to wrap individual grievance into a wider conspiracy theory," he added.

Some of the defining events that come to mind are the 2011 attack in Norway, the Paris attacks in November 2015, the 2016 truck attacks in Nice and a Berlin Christmas market. The UK witnessed an unusual number of attacks, such as the murder of UK parliamentarian Jo Cox (2016), the London Bridge attack and Manchester Arena bombing of 2017.

Even though terrorism on a global scale is decreasing, far-right terror is on the rise in the West. According to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2019, far-right terrorism has increased by 320% in the last five years. The report ranks the UK as the 28th most affected country in the world - the worst record for a western European nation.

Read more:Far-right terrorism on the rise in the West, bucking global terror trends

Nora Demleitner professor of law at the Washington and Lee School of Law Media told Euronews that editorial choices by media outlets have a substantial effect on the public's perception.

"The focus on Jihadist attacks remains high," she said.

"They tend to cover them substantially more than terror attacks inspired by other ideologies. That is particularly true for right-wing attacks. So the public likely overestimates the likelihood of Jihadist terror. Also, to note here the fear of widespread terror attacks tied to the demise of ISIS and the concern about returnees has not come true. Still, domestic fears have led the European countries failing to acknowledge their own citizens who are being held in Middle Eastern countries. The long-term fallout of that response remains to be seen. Most extreme Britain increasingly resorts to the revocation of citizenship."

Read more here:
10 stories that changed Europe in the last decade - Euronews

On the morning of 14 August 1945 towards the end of the second world war, 16-year-old Arek Hersh and 300 other Jewish children boarded a squadron of 10 converted Stirling bombers and took off from Prague. They were organised in groups of 30 to each aeroplane, with 15 sitting on each side on the floor. Hersh remembers it vividly: They cut us some bread, he says. We thought it was cake. They gave us each a piece and it was great. About eight hours later, they landed at RAF Crosby-on-Eden, near Carlisle.

The children were the first intake of a pioneering rehabilitation scheme, in which boys and girls from labour and concentration camps in eastern Europe were transported to the Lake District to find new families and start afresh. Their journey has been dramatised by the screenwriter Simon Block and the result is a timely and moving BBC film The Windermere Children, starring Thomas Kretschmann and Romola Garai, to be shown this month, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

At 91, Hersh is spry with a mischievous sense of humour. For almost half a century, he spoke to no one about his Holocaust experience. Not to his three daughters, who are old enough now not only to have kids of their own but also grandchildren. Nor to Jean, his second wife, whom he married in the early 1970s. Eventually, around 1995, Hersh decided to write it all down. The words came excruciatingly slowly. Two lines a day, he recalls, when we meet at his comfortable home just north of Leeds. But I wrote it, and then after that I could speak, I could talk about it.

Before the war, Hersh Herszlikowicz back then lived with his parents, brother and three sisters in Sieradz, a garrison town in west Poland. His father was a bootmaker, much in demand for making officers footwear. When the Nazis invaded, they came first for Hershs father, but he escaped; they came back for his brother, but he also slipped away. That left 11-year-old Arek, who was packed off to a labour camp near Poznan to lay lines and sleepers for the Poznan-Warsaw railway, which would speed up the German attack on the Soviet Union. One of his responsibilities was to clean the room of the camp commandant, who every day would leave Hersh a hunk of bread on his desk. It wasnt much, but Hersh believes it saved his life. We started with 2,500 men, he says. Within 18 months, there were only 11 of us left alive. And I was one of them. Very, very lucky.

Luck is a word that comes up again and again in Hershs account. When he was sent to Auschwitz in 1944, he told the SS officer that he was 17 and a locksmith. He wasnt either of those things; he just wanted to suggest that he might be useful to the Nazis. So thats what I said, and they told me to go to the right side, says Hersh. And 180 children all went to the wrong side. And they were murdered.

The most gruelling experience for Hersh personally, however, came in the early months of 1945, when he was evacuated first on foot, in the bitter cold, to the Buchenwald camp in Germany and finally to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia on what he calls the train of damnation. A whole month on open wagons without food, says Hersh, shaking his head. We ate grass. I ate the leather on my left shoe to keep going. I didnt swallow but I chewed it.

Your first instinct is to try to think your way into their heads. But you realise thats impossible

Hersh was in Theresienstadt, expecting any moment to be killed, when the camp was liberated by the Russian army on 8 May, 1945. He was moved on to Prague and it was here he was selected for the Committee for the Care of Children from Concentration Camps, which was set up by the British philanthropist Leonard Montefiore, a leading figure in the Anglo-Jewish Association. Montefiore persuaded the British government to accept 1,000 displaced children aged eight to 16; the Home Office agreed on condition that the funds were found by the Jewish community. In the end 650 boys and 80 girls came over.

What kind of physical and mental shape must these children have been in? How do you begin to repair the damage done to individuals, who in many cases were the only surviving members of large families? How do you try to imagine what they might be thinking? These were the questions that faced the therapists and educators at Windermere who were to help them in August 1945. It was also a quandary for the team behind the new drama.

Your first instinct is to try to think your way into their heads, says Simon Block. But you realise thats impossible. I cant imagine what Arek, who was in four different concentration and labour camps including Auschwitz, went through. And not just for a day, but for years. You cant recreate that trauma; all you can do is reflect how their behaviour may have manifested some of that while they were at Windermere.

Hersh turns up the electric fire a notch and Jean walks in with a tray of tea, biscuits and cake, and instructs me with brisk hospitality to tuck in, because her husband will probably forget. On the walls are photographs of Hersh with the Queen, Prince Charles and Liza Minnelli. Oh yes, she dedicated a song to me one time, he says.

After landing at Crosby-on-Eden, Hersh and the other children were driven to the Calgarth estate in the village of Troutbeck Bridge. A mile from Windermere, it was a wartime housing scheme that had been used for workers from the Short Sunderland aeroplane factory, which had relocated there to evade the bombing. Dormitory accommodation was provided as well as single rooms for older boys, like Hersh. Each one had a bed, a chest of drawers, he says. There was everything you needed.

The Windermere programme is not as well known as the Kindertransport initiative, which moved nearly 10,000 mostly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied territories to Britain between 1938 and 1939. At that time, some British politicians, including former prime minister Lord Baldwin, argued that it was a humanitarian duty. I have to ask you to come to the aid of the victims, not of any catastrophe in the natural world, not of an earthquake, he said, but of an explosion of mans inhumanity to man.

Block sees clear parallels with todays migrant crisis. Windermere is a story of refugees and child refugees, he says, and I thought it was very pertinent considering what was going on at the time [in Calais] when we started working on it.

In 1945, the immediate priorities for the children were to get clothing and find out about their families. The Red Cross supplied clothes, but they were odd shapes and sizes, so many children walked around in their underwear for a few days until donations of garments from local families started arriving.

We started to live as normally as we could, remembers Hersh. Some kids brought us bicycles and they said, Go on, have a ride! We didnt understand what they were saying, but they gave us a bicycle. So we went on the main road, and we were cycling on the right-hand side, so they tooted the horn like mad, shouting from the cars. We didnt know what they were shouting at us. We couldnt speak one word of English! But we caught on quite quickly, and we went to the cinemas, sixpence per seat, and it was very nice and we made our own life and things were OK.

News of their families took time to trickle through. For some there was hope, even something close to a miracle. There is a powerful moment in The Windermere Children when one of the children is reunited with a long-lost brother, who he has been told has probably died. That really happened. Oh, it would be incredibly manipulative to have made that up, says Block. No, if you have that, you wouldnt need to make anything up.

For most though, including Hersh, there was only despair. He found out his mother had been gassed and thrown into a mass grave at the Chelmno extermination camp. Of his immediate family, only his older sister Mania had survived, having escaped to the Soviet Union. There is a scene in the drama where Hersh all the children, are played by Polish actors hears about the fate of his family and soon after breaks up with his girlfriend. I still had so much grief, he recalls. I had lost my whole family and I felt I couldnt worry about my girlfriend as well.

At the Calgarth estate, the children received no counselling. Instead, they were encouraged to swim in the lake, play football, and given basic English lessons. The thing about therapy obviously is that its only any use if somebody wants to engage with it, says Block. Almost the main point was to bring them together in one place where they could be with other people whod been through what theyd been through, talk about it among themselves if they wanted to.

That was certainly Hershs experience. There were three or four boys I had been with in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, he says. We were always together. So I could talk to them, because they had a similar story to mine, but not to anybody else.

We just had to suffer, he goes on. Terrible. I had about 30 years of nightmares. Middle of the night, I used to get a nightmare and so on. It was only after he had completed his book, A Detail of History, in 1998, he says, that he finally began to heal. Its left me now. After I wrote the book actually, it left me then.

The Calgarth estate programme was designed to be a temporary scheme, running for four months, after which, the younger children would be placed in the care of foster families, and the older ones would live in hostels and prepare for work. Hersh moved first to Liverpool with his friends and then Manchester. He trained as an electrician, but eventually, living in Leeds after marrying Jean, he bought and let property, mainly to students. Somewhere along the line, in the 1950s, he shortened his name from Herszlikowicz, because he was fed up with having to spell it out.

Block, who also wrote the 2015 BBC drama The Eichmann Show about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, interviewed a dozen Windermere survivors and found that most of them were very eager to get on with life. He continues, They couldnt bury what happened to them completely because it would come back in their sleep, in their subconscious, but they wanted families and all the rest of that. It was when they retired and they had more time to reflect that it all came barrelling back to them.

Hersh is now involved in education, at schools and universities, and with the charity March of the Living, which each year organises a walk between the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. In 2009, he was awarded an MBE. When I first went back to Auschwitz, it was awful for me, he says. I couldnt get through the gate. But after three attempts I got through and since then Ive been going there with children and young people to show them the place.

These visits are clearly still not easy why does he put himself through it? Because I dont want people to think that it just happened many moons ago, and people forgot about it, he says. I talk to everybody, so young people know that what actually happened to me can happen to anybody. Thats the main reason I do it.

Block found that this idea of giving something back is a recurring theme. The Windermere children are the most patriotic people Ive ever come across, he says. Theyre so grateful for the chance they got to start their lives again in the UK, and they want to express that in many ways, by being successful here and paying taxes and raising their families here.

Hopefully viewers will think, Well, its not impossible to bring people here and help them rather than be scared of those who might be fleeing from terrible experiences. We can bring them in, help them and then thats repaid many times over.

The Windermere Children will be broadcast on BBC Two later this month.

On 27 January, Holocaust Memorial Day 2020 will mark 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Information on different ways to get involved in this landmark anniversary can be found here

More:
From Nazi camps to the Lake District: the story of the Windermere children - The Guardian

The battle for control of Libya is about to enter a new and potentially disastrous phase if Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President, is given the go-ahead to proceed with his plan to deploy forces to Tripoli.

The long-running Libyan civil war, which has been raging since the overthrow of its dictator Col Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, is approaching a decisive phase, with forces led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar closing in on the capital.

Widely regarded as the leader who has the ability to restore order to this war-ravaged country, Field Marshal Haftar, who enjoys the backing of countries including Egypt and Russia, recently announced that his forces had launched their final battle for control of Tripoli.

The aim of the 76-year-old rebel commander is to remove the Government of National Accord, led by prime minister Fayez Al Sarraj and backed by the UN, and bring to an end its chaotic attempts to restore order to the country.

But the prospects of the long-running Libyan conflict being resolved any time in the near future could be seriously compromised if, as now seems likely, Mr Erdogan presses ahead with his proposal to send Turkish forces to Tripoli in support of the GNA. A bill has now been sent to the Turkish Parliament seeking approval for the deployment which, if granted, could see forces from the country arriving in Tripoli within the next few days.

Such a development would undoubtedly complicate efforts to resolve the dispute and might even result in an escalation of hostilities as Mr Erdogan, who increasingly sees himself as a major powerbroker in the Mediterranean, seeks to consolidate his influence over a key North African state.

Although the GNA is officially acting under the auspices of the UN, its abject failure to bring any sense of stability and security to the country has meant that it has very few international backers.

One of the main reasons the GNA has failed so miserably to assert its authority is because of the malign influence of groups, many of which have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Those with influence include Abdelhakim Belhaj, leader of the conservative Al Watan Party and former head of Tripoli Military Council. He was head of the defunct Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a group that previously campaigned for Qaddafi's overthrow and has been linked to the Manchester Arena terrorist attack in May 2017 that killed 23 people during a concert given by the American singer Ariana Grande.

Belhaj was named on the list of terrorists drawn up by Saudi Arabia at the start of the diplomatic dispute with Qatar in 2017.

Its association with known militants is one of the main factors for the GNA's failure to win international backing. To date the only countries actively supporting the GNA are Qatar, Turkey and Italy which, alone among the European nations, believes the body is the best means of protecting its extensive oil and gas interests in the North African state.

Mr Erdogans proposal to send troops in support of the GNA will, therefore, be seen as a desperate throw of the dice designed to save the Tripoli-based organisation from suffering certain defeat at the hands of Field Marshal Haftar.

Mr Erdogans move also needs to be seen in the context of Ankaras wider policy of seeking to expand its influence in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa after the recent discovery of large undersea gasfields.

Turkey is concerned that it might end up being isolated if the four main beneficiaries of the gas discovery Egypt, Israel, Cyprus and Greece are able to establish a co-operation mechanism to protect their energy assets in the region.

To this end, Ankara struck a deal with the GNA in November to create a strategic corridor that runs from Dalaman on Turkeys south-west coast and Derna on Libyas north-east coast.

The fact that the GNA does not even control the stretch of coast referred to in the deal, and that Field Marshal Haftar has refused to acknowledge the agreement, has not stopped Mr Erdogan from hailing the deal as a significant achievement in Ankaras attempts to protect its interests in the Mediterranean.

The deal has already provoked strong protests from Greece and Cyprus, which have a long history of territorial disputes with Turkey and claim the accord is void and violates the international law of the sea, while Egypt has called it illegal and not binding". During a December 12 summit, leaders of the EU issued a statement unequivocally siding with member states Greece and Cyprus.

Hence, Mr Erdogans plans to increase Ankaras ties with the GNA by sending forces to defend its interests not only risk causing a major escalation in the Libyan conflict, but could exacerbate tensions between Turkey and a range of other countries with competing interests in the region.

Turkeys deepening involvement in Libyas civil war could also have profound implications for the future stability of North Africa, as well as Europe. For a start, if Ankara succeeds in its aim to save the GNA and its associates, the most likely outcome for Libya will be the partition of the country between the area controlled by Field Marshal Haftar to the east and the remainder controlled by Tripoli to the west.

Such an outcome, though, would only further exacerbate tribal tensions in the region, potentially leading to a dramatic surge in the number of migrants seeking to make their way to Europe, thereby creating a migrant crisis not seen since the height of the Syrian crisis in the previous decade.

Con Coughlin is the Telegraphs defence and foreign affairs editor

Updated: January 5, 2020 11:30 AM

Excerpt from:
Turkey's gambit in Libya could tear the country apart - The National

Fresh out of the academy yet still very much an agent-in-training, Chancy Arnold was finally being given a little range.

He and his partner were told to drive on the border road east, familiarize themselves with the rolling hills and unmarked trails that would become their new office.

As they approached the base of Otay Mountain in San Diego County, they came upon a man lying face down in the dirt. About 50 yards to the south, a flimsy barbed wire fence denoted the U.S.-Mexico border.

Strange, Arnold thought, does he really think hes hiding from us?

The agents yelled at the man: Get up, we can see you!

He remained still.

Closer inspection revealed the grisly truth: Someone had driven the migrant through the border, ordered him to the ground and put a bullet in the back of his head.

Even as a rookie, Arnold thought he had a pretty good idea of what it would be like to be a Border Patrol agent. His father had worn the same olive green uniform for as long as he could remember. But the discovery that day was a shock and a glimpse of the ruthless landscape he was now part of.

That was 1985, and Arnold is now nearing 35 years with the agency, making him the longest-serving Border Patrol agent in the nation.

The border has changed considerably in that time.

Arnold has watched the terrain transform into one of fences and roads, surveillance cameras and sensors. Hes seen migration patterns turn from single Mexican men to unaccompanied children and asylum-seeking families.

Hes had to acknowledge the humanity and desperation of the people he encounters while enforcing the laws and policies hes sworn to uphold.

Most agents retire after 20 to 25 years. But Arnold always planned to work until the Border Patrol made him leave. That will be in July, when he turns 57.

Since Day 1, Arnold said, I was going to work until the end.

Arnold was just shy of 3 years old when his father left his job as a roughneck on a Montana oil rig and joined the Border Patrol in 1965. The Arnolds left the northern plains for the dusty borderlands of El Centro.

The year his father joined was a turning point on the southwestern border. The U.S. bracero program, which had sanctioned agricultural labor by Mexican migrants, had just been shut down. And the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 for the first time restricted legal immigration from the Western Hemisphere, including Mexico, while opening it up to Asia and Africa. Preference was given to those with U.S. citizen family members or desirable skills and professions.

But demand for Mexican labor didnt end, and soon migration that once might have been legal was now illegal, creating a large new population of unauthorized immigrants.

The El Centro sector apprehended some 5,300 migrants in 1965, a figure that more than doubled over the next five years. In neighboring San Diego, apprehensions rose to 50,600 over the same period.

It wasnt until Arnold was around 21 that he could imagine carving his own path as an agent.

What the Border Patrol represented securing our borders, securing our nation appealed to me at the time, he recalled. It also provided for a long-term career, no college degree needed, and the chance to work outdoors.

Quite honestly, he said, it was what I knew.

On a recent Friday, Arnold made the familiar trek to Arnies Point, a vista overlooking what used to be one of the most heavily trafficked illegal border crossings.

It looks nothing like it did when he was a mop-top rookie.

But gazing down, Arnold with a military-style crew cut now turned silver was looking decades into the past.

He could see thousands of migrants gathering in a soccer field that has since been filled in by dirt. He could see the vendors in the festival-like atmosphere selling last-minute provisions before the nightly surge north. And he could see agents running through the scrub brush in pursuit.

Catch who you can, process them at the station, come back for more. Repeat. That was the pace back in those days.

In 1985, San Diego accounted for more than 427,000 of the southwest borders 1.2 million apprehensions, the most of any sector.

Just like when his father joined the agency, the southwestern border was at another turning point. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act sought to stem the rising illegal flow by authorizing a 50% increase in Border Patrol staffing and toughening criminal laws against employers. At the same time, it provided a pathway for amnesty for some longtime migrant residents, giving them a chance at legal status.

But illegal immigration continued to grow.

And the increased manpower was slow to materialize. It wasnt until 1994 that the roughly 3,000 agents nationwide in the mid-1980s grew to 4,200, according to Syracuse Universitys Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which gathers federal data.

About 140 of those agents were assigned to Brown Field station when Arnold began. Their coverage area stretched from just east of the San Ysidro Port of Entry to Otay Mountain.

It was from here that Arnold departed each evening, armed with a six-shooter revolver, six to 12 spare bullets, handcuffs and a radio. Agents patrolled in American-made SUVs.

The border fence then was nothing more than barbed wire or cable strung between poles. It didnt stop foot traffic from coming north. Rather, it was meant to stop vehicle loads of drugs or people. It worked sometimes.

Working the swing shift, thered be eight or nine vehicle chases going on at the same time, Arnold recalled. Itd be like a dog fight, trying to figure out whos got this chase and whats going on with that one.

Just north of Arnies Point, finger canyons disappear around the bend. Thats where, in the dense brush, Arnold once hunted for bandits who were hunting for migrants.

The canyons were notoriously violent, a place where robbers could easily hide and prey on those who crossed north. Rapes, assaults and murder were common.

Arnold was just three years out of the academy when he was picked for the elite bandit detail. The stakes were higher on this assignment, and gunfights were practically inevitable.

In fact, Arnies Point was named for one. Its where Agent Arnie Forsyth was once hit in the buttocks during a shoot-out with bandits.

Arnold got into his first and only gunfight in a canyon farther west.

The detail had intelligence of a two-man ambush operation, where one bandit would hide behind a stand of trees at a T-intersection of two trails while the other would distract passing migrants.

Sure enough, Arnolds group approached and took down the distractor. Then the bandits partner came around from behind with a loaded .45-caliber pistol. The agents fired. The bandit was hit; he survived.

Arnolds rotation on the bandit detail was the second to last before the unit was disbanded. But he credits the experience for making him a better cop.

I think it helped me grow up.

More substantial fencing starting going up around 1990 to stem the increasing flow of migrants. But the corrugated landing-mat material, installed on its side, acted more like a ladder than a fence.

It was also easily breached with tools.

At the same time, a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment was sweeping the state. Then-Gov. Pete Wilson helped push through Proposition 187, a voter-approved initiative that slashed state services such as healthcare and public education to unauthorized immigrants. The law was later overturned by a federal judge.

A new strategy was launched in 1994 called Operation Gatekeeper that flooded the San Diego border with agents in three tiers a highly visible show of force that would dissuade migrants from crossing in the first place and catch those who did farther inland.

Apprehensions soared in the first year to more than half A million, then they began to drop off sharply. From fiscal 1995 to 2005, overall apprehensions in the sector declined by 76%.

While some may have been disinclined to make the journey north, however, most just shifted routes east to the less fortified deserts, into the territory Arnolds father had once patrolled.

In the five years after Gatekeeper was launched, apprehensions in El Centros sector rose from 37,317 to 238,126.

The shift didnt come as a surprise but was rather a tactical decision by leaders: Push illegal crossings away from large cities and into wilderness areas for easier apprehensions. But the human cost was high, as the harsher environment claimed thousands of lives over the years.

Following in his fathers footsteps, Arnold eventually transitioned into management.

Hes covered just about every job in the San Diego sector: supervisor, training officer, watch commander. He spent 13 years in the prosecutions unit, readying cases for criminal and administrative court. By then, he had gone back to school, earning a criminal justice degree.

Arnold went to Washington in 2009 for nine months to coordinate care for unaccompanied minors, who in the years preceding had been fleeing to the United States in record numbers. The waves had sent authorities scrambling to find a way to place the children, mostly teens, in appropriate housing long term while caring for their short-term needs at Border Patrol stations.

The experience would help prepare him for his current role.

As assistant chief over prosecutions, asset forfeiture and detentions in the San Diego sector, Arnold has most recently been in charge of mitigating what he calls a humanitarian crisis that started about a year ago with the surge of Central American caravans arriving at the border to seek asylum. Most of them are families.

Although some of the migrants follow protocol and present themselves at ports of entry, many see the long wait of metered lines and cross illegally. Then they sit and wait to be arrested, so they can claim asylum.

Many families ended up staying several days at Border Patrol stations, long past the 72-hour limit, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement reluctant to release them into the community determined where to house them next in accordance with a court agreement that set out the terms of detention for children.

All our Border Patrol stations are set up, built and designed not for families, not for children, but for single adult males, Arnold said. We were holding people in custody longer than we ever intended to hold people in. People in custody longer require more resources.

The change in population shifted agents away from patrolling the line and into caretaker roles.

The latest scrutiny comes as a group of doctors urges Customs and Border Protection, the umbrella agency of the Border Patrol, to hold free flu shot clinics in detention centers for migrant children. Three children have died in detention from the flu in the past year, none in San Diego.

A few weeks ago, doctors demonstrated outside the Border Patrols sector headquarters in Chula Vista, where Arnold is based; the day ended with six protesters arrested.

CBP officials have called vaccine programs in short-term detention not feasible.

The current spotlight on the border is perhaps the most intense its ever been and has created political and philosophical rifts across the country. In many ways, it illustrates the deeper divisions facing the nation.

Arnold tries not to let the discord get to him.

I know theres always throughout history going to be those individuals who dont agree with who we are or what we do, he said. One thing Ive tried to make sure were focused on is that we conduct ourselves with integrity and as professionals.

The vast majority of agents are at the mercy of laws, policies and a vast bureaucracy operating high above them.

We dont get the luxury to say no to laws weve been asked to enforce, he said. Were going to enforce those laws.

But not at the expense of losing their humanity.

I think were portrayed as not caring about people, Arnold said. We do. Your heart goes out to these people. We are humans, we do care about the individuals we encounter.

The Border Patrol is being handed over to a new generation, as agents who came on board during the hiring frenzy of Operation Gatekeeper begin to consider retirement.

But Arnold wont be leaving without first getting a seventh star on the sleeve of his uniform. He gets one for every five years of service.

Ive never met someone with seven stars in my career, he said.

Not even his dad, who retired with four.

Davis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune

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In a lifetime on the border, Agent Chancy Arnold has seen it transform - Los Angeles Times