“For Italy, moderate flows would still be OK as the government has convinced public opinion that the problem is sorted for the moment and the domestic mainstream media has not been very curious to find out why,” Toaldo said.
“The Gentiloni government works closely with the GNA not because it believes it will last, but mainly because Gentiloni is in a hurry,” Harchaoui noted. “The government in Rome is focused on delivering results on the migrant-crisis front before the elections in 2018.”
It seems a delicate peace has been ripped apart in northwest Libya. A country conflicted by sporadic battles in and around other major cities may now have a new area prone to the occasional armed conflict.
“For Libya, what happened in the last two months was the destabilization of the northwest of the country, an area so far covered by local cease-fires since the spring of 2015,” said Toaldo. “The balance has been broken. We’ll have to see if the losers will fight back."
(Picture: IOM)