Paris - Calls have mounted for a military response to the Mediterranean migrant crisis, but experts say such plans are totally unworkable and mark an attempt to militarise what should be a purely humanitarian problem.
On Thursday, European leaders will gather in Brussels to discuss new strategies in the wake of the latest disaster on Sunday, in which hundreds of migrants drowned when their boat capsized on the way from Libya to Italy.
Much of the political rhetoric has focused on the people smugglers operating along the North African coastline, described by Italian Prime Minister Mateo Renzi as "the slave traders of the 21st century".
An initial EU ministerial meeting on Monday called for a "civil-military" response, and British Prime Minister David Cameron is reportedly considering the deployment of one of the country's biggest warships in a bid to "go after the criminal gangs".
But experts see any attempt to tackle the problem militarily as doomed to fail.
"This problem is totally unsolvable with military means," Alain Coldefy, a retired French admiral, told AFP.
"Politicians have on several occasions asked me the question of what could be done to stop this trafficking by force, and the response is simple: nothing," he said.
"Once these boats loaded with migrants have left Libyan waters, we can only apply international rules, which means rescuing people."
Marines are not trained or equipped to launch operations against these kind of boats, Coldefy added. Nor do they have an option of firing on them.
"They talk about capturing and destroying migrant boats, but presumably they will have people onboard, so they're not going to just shoot them out of the water," said Matt Carr, the British author of "Fortress Europe" about the continent's treatment of migrants.
"Others say the only way to stop them is to destroy all the boats in Libya, which is obviously non-sensical," he added.
"How do you know what is a good boat or bad boat? Many are just fishermen seizing on a chance to make a living."
Other options appear even more unrealistic. A blockade of the Libyan coast, for instance, would be tantamount to a declaration of war, said Coldefy, and would be blocked by Russia at the UN Security Council.
AFP
