Beleaguered island

Imagine you live on a pretty Mediterran-ean island with a population of 5000. Then imagine being overrun by 20,000 strangers fleeing misery and hardship in their home countries.

This is the situation in the Italian island of Lampedusa, in between Sicily, Libya and Tunisia. It's one of the closest sanctuaries for people running from the civil war in Libya and economic turmoil in Tunisia*.

Chaos has taken over the island, which simply can't cope with the new arrivals and now resembles a makeshift refugee camp.

Around 6000 of the migrants have been sleeping rough, and all of them are relying on the goodwill of Lampedusans and relief workers for food, medical care and other essentials.

Some of the Tunisian men were tricked into the journey by traffickers telling them Europe would welcome them. With so many people fleeing war and upheaval, the welcome has turned decidedly chilly.

The Italian authorities are belatedly taking steps to move the migrants elsewhere and restore order to Lampedusa, which is also expecting the usual surge of tourists during the summer.

The existence of so many troublespots around the world has led to an increasing tide of refugees wanting to leave shattered countries and find more settled and prosperous lives elsewhere.

Many of the countries they go to are struggling to cope with the influx, not helped by an increasingly xenophobic public and their own economic difficulties.

But countries doing relatively well have a moral duty to take in those from less fortunate countries and help them to re-establish themselves. Those who feel no such duty and think migrants should simply be sent back home and left to their fates are heartless to say the least.

There but for fortune go you and I.

* also Egyptians and Moroccans

Rescue remedy

When a large chunk of my taxes is being spent on foreign conflicts of one kind or another, I try hard to understand what those conflicts are about and whether I actually support them or not. It's been particularly difficult to comprehend the assault on Libya.

It was all rushed through parliament and the UN so quickly dozens of awkward questions went unanswered, and are still unanswered. We were told it was a humanitarian rescue of thousands of innocent Libyans facing slaughter by Gaddafi's troops. But had any massacres already occurred? I don't recall hearing of any. And was a massacre actually about to happen? One can only guess.

So various countries including the UK have invaded Libya, firing bombs and missiles in all directions, causing colossal damage, to carry out a rescue mission which may or may not have been needed.

I started off by thinking that any such action against a sovereign state was unacceptable, whatever the pretext. Would we accept an invasion of our own country to rescue the residents of Manchester? I think not.

Then I thought that preserving political autonomy, however worthy and democratic it sounds, can't be an excuse for leaving thousands of trapped people to die. It would be like refusing to enter someone's house when the family was about to be murdered.

But the quandary remains of what precisely the mission's objective was and whether it's being achieved. I can't find any clear answers to either question. All we get is gung-ho reports of bombing raids and speculation about whether Gaddafi is planning to do a runner.

I have mixed feelings even about the way the so-called rebel forces are gaining ground and look likely to replace Gaddafi. I have no idea what their intentions are and whether they'll run the country any better than the ousted dictator. Plenty of shiny new governments have proved to be just as corrupt and inept as the old ones.

Oh and one minor point. When the government keeps telling us the country is broke and we all have to tighten our belts, how come we can find £3 million a day to bomb Libya?