I am fascinated by history and more so by historical plays. Shakespeare is by far my favourite. I am very fond of Julius Caesar, the reason being I played the part of Mark Anthony in my younger days. Although many of my readers do not automatically associate me with such interests these are complementary to both my legal profession and political career.
In Shakespeare’s play, Caesar remarks about his childhood friend Cassius’s “lean and hungry look”. He found it dangerous and joked he would have preferred Cassius to be fat and contented. I have lost count of the times when, in a meeting, I too caught sight of someone’s giveaway lean and hungry look, just as I have witnessed Calpurnia’s “pale cheek” and Cicero’s “fiery eyes” and known men like Brutus, the most noble of their generation but fatally misguided.
Just as Shakespeare offers us an entire zodiac of characters to recognise (and a bit more reliable than astrology for our everyday needs), so too does history help us understand the past so we may try to avoid unpleasant futures. We so often think of the Roman Empire as an Italian or European venture, which was eventually unravelled by rebellions from the north. However, the weakness that led to fragmentation began by the loss of food supplies from North Africa, which was a critical part of the empire’s security.
That geostrategic lesson is once more needed today. Mainstream Europe is worried about fragmentation between its member states, not to mention within them. Two common causes are often identified as being immigration and militant Islam, with further fragmentation of the European ideal being caused by right-wing parties that pander to the uncertainty. However, there is little popular discussion about how these developments are linked to what is happening in North Africa, especially at their own southern borders.
Two weeks ago, I attended a meeting in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) as a member of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. (The ACP brings together parliamentarians from Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific.) It was one of those meetings I have sometimes been criticised, including, to my bafflement, by some journalists, for attending. The criticism is that such meetings are irrelevant to Malta’s interests.
However, I believe that to think so is to make the same grave mistake of thinking that Africa had nothing to do with the Roman Empire’s decline. What is happening in the Sahel-Saharan region is of fundamental importance to the security, health and values of the whole of Europe, including Malta.
The Sahel-Saharan region mainly covers Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, Libya and Chad. Three of those countries (Mauritania, Algeria and Libya) have important political and economic relationships with Europe. One of them is an immediate neighbour of Malta.
The region itself is huge (four million square kilometres) and isolated, difficult for a state to govern. It is a kind of vacuum that has permitted the thriving of organisations dedicated to terrorism and drug and human trafficking.
The North African branch of Al-Qaeda (AQMI) is one such organisation based there, using the region as a launch pad for attacks on Europe and its citizens. It is also systematically undermining the stability of the whole of North Africa, which, should it descend into civil war or chaos, would have alarming implications for European trade and security. In fact, the number of terrorist attacks in North Africa have increased by 500 per cent since 2001.
If you still think this has nothing to do with Europe or Malta, think again.
Terrorists often use underdevelopment in recruiting youth, who join not out of conviction but by the temptation of substantial illegal earnings. They undermine the self-confidence and infrastructure of entire societies.
The consequences are familiar in the resentment of the West, high rates of emigration and the flourishing of drug and human trafficking.
Such consequences do not just land on our doorstep. They enter our lives. They enter in the form of attempted or successful terrorist attacks (for example, Sweden only this week) or kidnappings (as, recently, with French citizens in this same region). They enter in the form of drug trafficking. The traffickers regularly caught on our shores represent the success of the Malta Police Force and its European partners. However, they also represent the relative failure of Europe and its partner states to provide a viable alternative economic development.
And such consequences enter in the form of human trafficking. Whatever agreements are reached with a country such as Libya, it is clear addressing the problem at its source means addressing the issues of the Sahel-Saharan region.
The final long and detailed resolution of the Kinshasa meeting addressed the most important factors of the problem and identified the major pieces (and agencies) of the solution. Nonetheless, was it necessary for Malta to be represented there?
I should think so. First, in my own speech, I identified a lacuna in the draft resolution. The victim countries were named. However, the states suspected of complicity with the criminal organisations were not. I insisted these states, with a “lean and hungry look”, should be named as well.
Second, I fail to see how Malta can discuss matters concerning our African neighbours’ northern borders without being conversant with their problems on their southern borders.
Europe gets this. Is it so difficult for some Maltese to understand this as well?
Like history and Shakespeare, distant places may seem far from our everyday concerns. In fact, they are often closer to everything we hold dearest than we suspect.
Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.