Libya: Far away (from Italy), but so close

By FRANCESCA D'ESPOSITO
ISIS is advancing in Libya. After taking Sirte and captured the main government buildings of the important cities of the Gulf, ISIS is pointing to Misurata. In Sirte were in fact distributed leaflets announcing the intention to take Misurata. After Tripoli and Benghazi, it is the third largest city in Libya and the main harbor. It is about 250 kilometers west of Sirte and at about 400 km from Italy.
So, when they say, in a recent declaration, they are at the south of Rome, they really are!
With this, our Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni has started to evacuate the Italians diplomats and people living there and announced the Italian possibility of leading a UN mission in Libya in order to fight terrorism at the forefront on the military, political and cultural side.
The situation is quickly deteriorating, even if Italy recognizes the importance of having a political plan and to reinforce every diplomat solutions, we must be prepared for a military intervention. So, our Defense Minister, Roberta Pinotti said that 5,000 troops are ready to action.
Those hasty declarations of our ministers immediately put Italy at the top of the list of ISIS enemies.
Now Libya is in a total chaos, they need urgent action. Italian Prime Minister, Renzi has cooled tempers and he has made clear that Italy cannot go in with military force, at least for the moment. What we need by now is to give more strength to the mediation of the UN.
During the 2011 air war to overthrow Gheddafi, done essentially by the French President at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, to win the elections, they have decapitated the government. They eliminated the dictator, well done, but the alliance has forgotten the most difficult task: to support the difficult transition to democracy, to create a regular army and a police force, to disarm militias and to mediate between the tribes divided by ancient ethnic hatreds.
So after three years of political disaster, Libya fell to the hands of ISIS and the situation is poised to become even worse than Syria, with the slight difference that they are almost in Europe...
So far, negotiations between the parties in Geneva have had little effects. With the conquest of Sirte by jihadists, threats to Italy include the presence of about two hundred thousand immigrants on the Libyan coast attempting to reach Italian coasts and the danger of attacks on oil and gas fields we have created in Libya in a short time a highly explosive situation.
Can we stay here, doing nothing, waiting for them to come to kill us?